Amid drought, billionaires control a critical California water bank by chloesorvino
Water prices are soaring in California’s Central Valley, where a quarter of the nation’s food is grown. As the West Coast’s megadrought worsens, one farming company has long been scrutinized for its outsize role in the arid region’s water supply. , can buy up huge amounts of water whenever it needs more. Most of the Resnicks’ water comes from long-term contracts and other water from land rights they have from the farms they own.
The Resnicks’ storage arrangement is controversial. “They have been banking water by using public and private dollars to corral a public resource. Because of their water rights and their wealth, they are insulating themselves from the drought,” says Char Miller, the director of environmental analysis at Pomona College. “Private capital has no problem with the drought, while the rest of us do. That’s one of the deep social divides.
They wouldn’t have been able to create such an expansive farming operation without a sweetheart deal that gave them access to the Kern Bank. In 1994, some of Stewart Resnick’s most trusted advisors met with several leaders from southern California water districts and state water officials to broker negotiations, in what some critics have called secret meetings.
The Kern Bank says about one million acre-feet of water is currently stored, or roughly two thirds of its capacity, but water recovery is limited to about half of what can be added each year, or 240,000 acre-feet per year. In gallon terms, that’s 78 billion, and the Wonderful Co. doesn’t own all of it.
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