Tom Selleck cast as villain of California drought in lawsuit alleging water theft

He possesses Hollywood’s lushest moustache – a thick, luxuriant growth which seems to enhance the virtue of the characters he plays on screen.

The heroic private detective of Magnum PI, the honest police commissioner of Blue Bloods, the doting father of Three Men and a Baby, all bolstered by Tom Selleck’s facial foliage.

But now the actor has been cast as a villain of Hollywood – for stealing truckloads of water to try and maintain a verdant ranch amid California’s drought.

He allegedly looted water from a public hydrant to irrigate his 60-acre ranch and avocado farm outside Los Angeles. This is a very personal, literal watergate, and it has made Selleck the new face of celebrity drought-shaming, a term of our times for high-profile people who flout state-mandated efforts to curb water consumption.

The Calleguas municipal water district, which serves about three-quarters of Ventura County, said it paid a private investigator $21,685.55 to document the water thefts.

The district is suing Selleck, 70, and his wife, Jillie Mack-Selleck, in the superior court for costs associated with the investigation plus legal fees, undetermined damages, plus a preliminary and permanent injunction barring the couple and their contractors or employees from taking more water.

The complaint said a white commercial water truck filled up from a hydrant by a construction site in Thousand Oaks and took the water to Selleck’s property in the neighbouring Hidden Valley area of Westlake seven times between 20 September and 3 October 2013.

Cease-and-desist notices were sent to the actor’s homes in November 2013, including one on Avenue of the Stars. But three weeks later, the same truck returned, filled up, and again delivered water to the ranch.

The same truck allegedly made further trips between the hydrant and Selleck’s ranch four times at the end of March this year.

Selleck and Mack have lived for nearly three decades at the ranch. An aerial photo from the real estate site Zillow this week did not show the property as “particularly lush”, with a swath of “fairly dense” trees and shrubbery and “plenty of brown grass”, Courthouse News Service reported. It was unclear when the photo was taken. Zillow assessed the value at $10.2m.

A representative for Selleck did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

But curbing water consumption has become a litmus of good citizenship – and celebrity – in California, which is reeling from four years of drought.

Farms have withered and in some rural areas taps have run dry. Governor Jerry Brown has ordered 25% cuts in urban water use. There are fines of up to $500 a day for residential users who waste water and $10,000 a day for water suppliers.

From the lush lawns of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West and beyond, self-appointed “drought-shamers” have been using multiple social media platforms all year to identify and excoriate alleged water wasters under the hashtags #DroughtShaming and #DroughtShame.

Selleck has won an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a People’s Choice Award largely by playing virtuous characters. In addition to law enforcers he has played a love interest in Friends and Dwight Eisenhower.

In contrast to Hollywood’s cast of outwardly liberal environmentalists, the actor calls himself a political independent with “a lot of libertarian leanings”. He serves on the board of the National Rifle Association.