Bergner's Pump, Our Creek

by Bruce Patterson

April before last we moved to a place about halfway between Boonville and Philo, by what Anderson Valley's old timers used to call the Mason Dixon Line. I've heard that was on account of all of the partisan passions whipped up by the American Civil War. For the Civil War was fought not just back east but all over the west. Except out west folks didn't use muskets and cannon. Instead they used barroom brawls, sly, back-handed compliments, inopportune spits of tobacco, cold shoulders and hard glints in flinty eyes.

Back then Boonville was filled with Arkies and other southerners and Philo was filled with the more dandified, northern sorts. So the Yankees did their drinking on the Philo side of the Mason Dixon and the Confederates did theirs on the Boonville side. That was their way of keeping the peace.

Now if some fool Yankee got up the notion to go and do some drinking in Boonville, then he brought along a whole bunch of boys who were even bigger fools than he. Same for any Boonville boys who took a mind to raise some hell in Philo. Except it didn't take so many of them.

That's how I've heard it. I'm sure others have heard it different.

So we move down that way and, since the ranch straddles Anderson Creek, it isn't long before I start taking occasional hikes up and downstream. Anderson Creek being "blue line," belongs to all of us, we the people. Which means any of us can hike along the blue line for as far as we want and nobody has the right to say squat about it.

April before last, when I first hiked the creek, the water was shallow and turgid. All of the beautiful weather we'd been experiencing in recent weeks was the result of the Valley's worst springtime drought in living memory. Though I saw some schools of fingerling steelhead swimming in the deeper pools, they were trapped and I couldn't imagine them being too happy about it — or them having much of a chance of living long enough to ever swim in the ocean.

Because we'd been living in town for quite some while, we especially enjoyed the silence in our new place. Until one hot summer night, in the middle of the night, this God-awful loud diesel water pump fires up and starts bellowing. The damned contraption was making so much noise that I had to pull myself up out of bed to shut my windows.

The next day I mentioned it to a neighbor and found out that the racket was caused by this guy George Bergner, a vintner I'd never heard of, pumping water out of Anderson Creek. Bergner was pumping out so much water, my neighbor claimed, that you could watch the puddles shrinking. In the course of our conversation, my neighbor made it clear to me that he was none too happy about Bergner and his pump.

Later when I mentioned the pumping operation to a friend who is an environmental activist, I prompted a long stream of complaints about the guy. But him pumping out of Anderson Creek during a drought — my friend thought it was scandalous.

I found myself sticking up for the guy. My complaint was with the racket he was making, that's all. So far as Bergner taking water from the creek, well, that's legal and others living up and downstream are doing the same thing. So I couldn't very well single out this poor fellow.

Yet I do have a bone to pick with Bergner and so I should come out with it. First, all I expect from my neighbors is neighborliness. Bare bones, that means respect and consideration. Come the 4th of July I won't be out setting off fireworks and boomers, and at the stroke of the New Year I won't be blasting through a magazine of ammunition with my AK-47. Respect and consideration, you know? It's the little things like plain good manners that I so much appreciate.

The way I see it, if a fellow can afford to lay down two jackpots, a bonus, three windfalls and a Lollapalooza to buy himself an acre of baby grapes wrapped in milk carton diapers, then he can damn sure part with the pocket change it'd take to build himself a straw bale, soundproof pump house. If he went and did that then maybe a dozen nearby families would sleep better and he could run his pump any time he wanted with nobody being the wiser. If he'd have done that, I wouldn't be writing this.

But since I am it does seem this guy Bergner has — what? — a long rap sheet. In this very same newspaper I've read about some of the charges and had some facts explained. It's almost like this guy's a local outcast. I imagine him holed up in his hide out, surrounded by a trigger happy posse.

First there was the talk about him taking a bulldozer to some acres of fine young apple trees and pushing them into burn piles. Distasteful from an aesthetic point of view, surely, but since when can't a farmer switch crops when he wants to? Moreover, unless you are well established and know just what you're doing, you can't make any money growing apples anymore. So why stick with them?

Still, because apple wood makes excellent BBQ, and since there's good money in making it, him hiring a bulldozer instead of wood cutters to rid himself of his trees wasn't what I'd call a smart business decision or what the "wise use" folks over in the Farm Bureau would call wise use.

Next there's the bit about him letting even more acres of apple trees go derelict. It's one thing to plow under a crop of cotton because the spot price has dropped so much that it'd cost you more to harvest than it's worth. Yet whenever a farmer has plowed under a crop it has usually been for him a mightily unpleasant experience and always an act of desperation.

But apple orchards are not row crops. To let a perfectly good orchard waste away while so many folks are unemployed or underemployed is, I think, objectionable. Traditionally, if you didn't want to work your trees, then you'd lease them out to somebody who did. If there really is no profit whatsoever in you tending to your orchard, then you'd lease it out for just a few boxes of fancy pick and a year's supply of juice. Then you'd sit back and let somebody else have a go at it.

Not everyone sees an apple orchard as a financial investment valued solely by its percentage of return as measured against its "opportunity costs." Farm workers, for one, don't have enough money to think like that. Having nothing worth selling except their daily labor, what they do see is a few tons of apples that, without too much effort, could be cultivated, harvested, sold and eaten.

Nowadays in Anderson Valley a full time farm worker might make $15,000 per year. If he's "legal" and has a family, he might also get a fistful of food stamps and maybe some WIC coupons. That being the case, why wouldn't a farm worker do a bit of moonlighting unless he was just too tired? What good is free time if you have no money? Put differently, when all of your money goes to paying your bills, any extra income is pennies from heaven.

So it's not a stretch to say that Bergner, or anybody else around here with a derelict orchard, wouldn't have too much trouble finding somebody willing to make wise use of it.

* * *

Bergner caused quite a stir when he supposedly ripped up a Pomo "archaeological site." But I must admit that the allegation never bothered me much. The way I figure it, there are laws against vandalizing "archaeological sites" and since Bergner was never charged with anything, I'm not going to worry about it.

Yet just when I start to think that maybe this guy's not getting a fair shake, I drive by his place and see that he has defoliated the roadside right-of-way. Using some sort of herbicide, he's killed every blade of spring grass, every blackberry and wildflower.

Who does this guy think he is? I've helped build two ranches along Highway 128 and I know what it's like dealing with Caltrans on questions of right-of-way. And here's this guy breaking the law up one side and down the other and in broad daylight.

And you know what? The right-of-way in front of his place is administered not by Caltrans but by Mendocino County. And hereabouts, when it comes to enforcing the laws with large landowners, the attitude of the local authorities is live and let live. So even though official complaints are filed against him, Bergner walks. He isn't required to re-seed and mulch, or to pay a fine, or to do time in jail.

So long as Bergner never again spreads poison on public land, I can live with that sort of leniency. I believe in second chances. When it comes to some things, I even believe in third or fifth chances. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a part of the "zero tolerance" crowd. I just wish everybody in Mendocino could experience such kindness and consideration from the local authorities.

Still, seeing Bergner get away with that made me think back to him supposedly ripping up that "archaeological site." Did he get a pass on that one too? Another "Just don't do it again" pat on the back?

And that's the trouble with living in a society with so much corruption. It's hard to know what to believe anymore.

* * *

It's late August and I'm taking a hike along Anderson Creek. Thanks to last spring's 14 inches worth of April showers, the creek is still running strong. It still ripples in the narrows and large, connected pools spread out over the wide spots. Hundreds if not thousands of fingerling steelhead are swimming in the pools. The water is fresh and cool and they dart around, chasing each other for what seems like the fun of it. Maybe they're happy because they know, come the season's first big gully washer, they'll be on their way downstream and so beginning their magical journeys.

Of course, on rare occasions, Bergner still does his night time water sucking, his pump's racket is about as welcome as a skunk-sprayed hound who bounds up to your supper table. But the pump is off now, I'm sitting next to a miniature cascade in a deep part of the gorge, and the only sounds I hear are water trickling, wind rustling in trees and, here and there in the distance, chirping birds.

The cascade I'm sitting beside connects two pools and, for the fun of it, I watch to see if I can spot a fingerling running the rapids in order to migrate between them. But I don't see any and I wonder if steelhead are also territorial and, once they've hunkered down in a pool to await high water, they repel all comers. If so, then I'm looking at a sort of fish Mason-Dixon Line and, if I do see a fingerling running the rapids, I'll know he's one adventurous fool.

It occurs to me that the lifeblood of the Valley isn't the flows of money created by the grape, tourist and real estate industries. We could throw in every type of local agricultural enterprise, every artist and craftsman, logger, mill worker and everybody else and we still wouldn't be talking about the lifeblood. Businesses come and go. People come and go. No, the lifeblood of the Valley is what I'm looking at. Suck the creek dry and we create a desert. Kill off the fish and we create a desert.

Since the economic lifeblood of the Valley belongs to all of us — not just the locals but to all people and, by extension, future generations — then so do the steelhead and the salmon who have recently gone missing. So who is looking after our holdings? If we expect private landowners to properly tend to their holdings, if we enact a whole body of rules and regulations designed to ensure they do just that, then it only seems proper that we should do the same with ours.

I'm tempted to bend over and take a drink out of the creek. I've drank out of a dozen mountain streams around here and I've never once gotten sick. But is it safe to drink out of Anderson Creek? Does anybody know? How much toxic "agricultural runoff" is in the water? How much seepage from ancient septic systems? How much poison from other sources? Does anybody keep track?

Deciding that I won't chance putting my lips to Anderson Creek, I get up and walk. The pattern of urban development we are seeing in the Valley looks like what happens when you toss a lit match into a stand of dry grass. The fire moves outward with lots of activity along the edges even as its center is turned to ash.

Up on the bank I spot a big old, goosed-out redwood outlaw about six foot thick. It's an outlaw because it's still standing and it's still standing because, any which way you felled it, it'd hit the ground and shatter into worthless pieces. It's an outlaw because generations of woodsmen have stretched their necks hard at it and had regarded it from every aspect and, damn, all of them had very reluctantly reckoned that felling it wasn't worth the bother.

The tree's companions through the centuries long since felled and made into lumber, it stands alone up on the bank, owing its longevity to its fragility.

I take a leap of fancy. What if my kids and grandkids could walk out behind Boonville during high water and see fat salmon and steelhead swimming upstream on their way to spawn? The science is in on what it takes to restore a fishery, and salmon and steelhead are not too particular. All they need is an outlet to the ocean, cool, shady water, rocky bottoms and glory holes. And with all of the tax money we send over the hill, with all of the idle heavy equipment we've got parked around here, with all of the unemployed workers willing to work on something meaningful, what would it take to restore Anderson Creek? It'd take just a little local unity, effort and a bit more time if we as a community really wanted to do it.

I come upon a four-strand, double-nasty barbed wire fence topping one bank of the creek. The fence begins and ends within 50 yards and so it is not only ugly, and hostile to wildlife, but also useless. I figure some dude at one time decided to cheaply fence off some acres for cattle and, after having gotten this far with it and while bleeding from all of the nicks he'd picked up, lost interest and moved on to something else, leaving this little stretch as a token of his efforts.

"Big plans," I think, "small results."

Like so much else nowadays, just plain ass-backwards. The idea is to have a small plan with big results.