[HERE IS THE COUPLE THAT STOLE THE WATER IN CA and HOW THEY DID IT.]
How This Billionaire Couple Stole California’s Water Supply
In a series of secret meetings in 1994, the Resnicks seized control of California’s public water supply. Now they’ve built a business empire by selling it back to working people.
One important storage facility is the Kern Water Bank, started in 1988. The facility was built with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, which could’ve been a good thing: the people of California would’ve owned the water.
But there were two Californians thirstier than the rest, and they wanted more water: Lynda and Stewart Resnick, and they had a lot of political power–we’ll get to that.
In 1994 state water officials, water infrastructure contractors, and agricultural landowners with water rights arranged a secretive meeting at a resort in Monterey Bay California.
These groups, a mix of private companies and public agencies, rewrote California’s water laws without any input from voters, taxpayers, or legislators. The new laws, called The Monterey Plus Agreement or The Monterey Amendments were devastating for working Californians and great for agriculture billionaires.
The original law had “urban preference” a long-standing rule that in times of drought the state water board would give urban areas–where people live–access to state water supplies before agricultural interests. Monterey axed that. That means that in times of drought the water systems for normal Californians would have to buy water from the private companies, because they weren’t getting it from the state.
The new agreement also loosened regulations on “paper water.” That’s water that doesn’t necessarily actually exist anywhere but on paper: the full quantities of water that providers could have, but don’t actually need to have. Today 5x as much water has been promised and sold as actually exists.
And importantly, the meeting changed ownership of the Kern Water Bank. What once belonged to the state was transferred to a few private water contractors. One of which was Westside Mutual, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wonderful Foods. The Wonderful employee who runs Westside, Bill Phillimore, is the chairman of the ‘public’ organization that manages the Kern Water Bank.
Boom. One secret meeting and the Resnicks owned nearly 60% of an important California water resource, built with hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money.
The new ownership combined with the rules on paper and surplus water meant that during times of drought the Resnicks could sell Kern water back to the state water systems.
They took Californian taxpayers’ water and sold it back to them– both literally as the water supply, and also to grow expensive food like gourmet pistachios and pomegranate juice. They converted the peoples’ water into products many can’t afford.
And that’s just one waterbank, the Resnicks also have control of other water boards and have been sued for directing more water towards their properties.
So how do they get away with this Chinatown-level chicanery? With philanthropy!
The Resnicks donate millions of dollars to politicians and research institutions, which help them secure control over water systems, and even get more water and more taxpayer funding.
One important project is the proposed California Delta Tunnel, a taxpayer funded project which would send water from Northern California to Central, where the Resnicks’ farms are. They’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on California and federal legislation and politicians who support the tunnel project.
But their favorite politician is Senator Diane Feinstein, chair of the Energy and Water subcommittee. She’s a close personal friend of the Resnicks, attending their holiday parties in Aspen and maintaining their financial interests.
https://perfectunion.us/how-this-billionaire-couple-stole-californias-water-supply/