Almost as soon as the unprecedented scale of the Los Angeles wildfires hit the public’s awareness, SJV Water started getting some pretty out there emails and texts alleging that Lynda and Stewart Resnick “own” 60% (75%, even 80%) of California’s water and were somehow “hoarding it” so it couldn’t be used to put out the flames.

Lois Henry

SJV Water

No. This is absolutely false information.

The Resnicks and their $6 billion farming company, the Wonderful Company, do not own or control anywhere near that percentage of water in California. And what they do own or control, has nothing to do with the Los Angeles region’s supplies.

In fact, it’s fairly ironic that the very people often accused of selling the San Joaquin Valley’s water to LA for profit, are now accused of keeping it from the same region.

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Major Water Players in California

It should also be noted that the multi-billion dollar J.G. Boswell Farming Company, headquartered in Pasadena, owns or controls substantial amounts of water in the San Joaquin Valley, but hasn’t been singled out in vicious misinformation campaigns. Nor has John Vidovich, a wealthy northern California developer, who controls Sandridge Partners, a large landowner with water assets in the valley. The list of major water players is long.

All of which makes one wonder, why the Resnicks?

That question aside, the Resnicks do own or control a lot of water. But nothing close to amounts claimed in the viral posts now circulating.

“The Wonderful Company uses less than 1% of the state’s water,” wrote Seth Oster, a Wonderful spokesman, in an email. The company put out a thread on “X” in response to the swirl of social media falsities.

“There is zero truth that any individual or company, much less ours, owns or controls most of the water in CA. It’s also not true we have anything to do with water supplied to Los Angeles,” a portion of the thread reads.

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Los Angeles Water Sources

Los Angeles gets its water either from the Owen’s Valley via an aqueduct owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power or the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which buys it through contracts with the State Water Project.

The Wonderful Company isn’t a participant in either of those entities and has no control over those supplies

The state’s reservoirs hold a combined 23.9 million acre feet, according to Department of Water Resource’s website.

In 2017, Wonderful’s extensive agricultural lands used about 400,000 acre feet of water, according to the book “The Dreamt Land,” by journalist and author Mark Arax. Stewart Resnick confirmed that amount was accurate, Arax said in a recent interview.

Clearly, the Resnick’s share of California’s surface water isn’t anywhere near 60%.

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California Water Control and Distribution

And how the Resnicks control that water makes it ludicrous for social media posters to say they could somehow release it to Los Angeles, or hold it back.

California water just doesn’t work like that.

The Resnicks own land, about 180,000 acres, in the San Joaquin Valley. That land is in agricultural water districts that hold state or federal water contracts, not the Resnicks. The contracts specify how and where that water can be used, not the Resnicks.

They can move it, trade it and even sell it, but typically only to other state or federal water contractors and it’s all done through the districts, which also own the canals.

The most likely source of these hoarding rumors is that the Resnicks own the Westside Mutual Water Company. That company has a 57% stake in the Kern Groundwater Bank Authority, which operates the Kern Water Bank, a vast stretch of land that can hold up to 1 million acre feet of groundwater.

Ownership of the Kern Water Bank is controversial and has been since the 1990s when it was deeded to the Kern County Water Agency from the state and then immediately turned over to the authority, which is, arguably, controlled by one private individual – Stewart Resnick.

The state had put more than $70 million into creating the water bank as a hedge against drought. But as part of revamping how the State Water Project operated, known as the Monterey Agreements, the bank was used as a bargaining chip and ended up in, largely, private hands.

Again, however, the water to fill that bank comes mostly through excess state and federal water delivered under contracts similar to those attached to ag land owned by the Resnicks and others.

Valley water can be – and is – sold to urban developments in southern and northern California. Such uses are controversial and often result in lawsuits. But those deals all involve contracts and permits to move water through publicly-owned canals.

The Resnicks can’t just open or shut a valve at their personal whim.

About the Author

CEO and editor Lois Henry has spent 30 years covering the San Joaquin Valley.

About SJV Water

SJV Water is an independent, nonprofit news site covering water in the San Joaquin Valley, www.sjvwater.org. Email us at sjvwater@sjvwater.org.