Accusations that one wealthy couple, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, have been hoarding water needed to fight the Southern California wildfires have been spreading widely online. While the Resnicks do own water rights in the state, claims they are hoarding the supply or hindering the fight to control the blazes aren’t true. Here’s what we know.
Who are the Resnicks?
Stewart and Lynda Resnick own the Wonderful Company. Founded in 1979, their portfolio includes Wonderful Pistachios, POM pomegranate juice, Halo tangerines — agricultural businesses that all require water — and Fiji Water. The company claims to be one of the largest food producers in the world and grows a significant portion of its produce in California.
However, it is the Resnicks’ large stake in the Kern Water Bank — a 32-square-mile underground reservoir 150 miles from Los Angeles — that has garnered negative attention in recent weeks.
The Kern Water Bank can hold nearly 500 billion gallons of water. The Resnicks own 57% of the rights to that water. That massive amount of water is fueling anger online, with some on social media erroneously claiming the couple owns 60% of the water in the state and accusing them of being one of the reasons firefighters lacked the water necessary to fight the fires. Those claims are not true.
How do California water rights work?
In California, water rights are owned by a collection of municipalities, homeowners and agricultural interests. Rights holders do not own the actual water; they own the right to use the water. The California State Water Resources Control Board clarifies that water rights are a “legal permission to use a reasonable amount of water for a beneficial purpose such as swimming, fishing, farming or industry.” Rights holders are also allowed to sell access to their water.
Felicia Marcus, Former Chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, explains that the state constitution includes a “prohibition against waste and unreasonable use.” That means that if “you actually ended up in a situation where somebody was withholding water at a grand scale,” the government could step in. In such situations, the state is allowed to order rights holders to curtail their water usage, to redirect water to areas that have greater need and, in some cases, revoke the water right itself.
According to a Wonderful Company spokesman, the Kern Water Bank is one of several sources of water the company owns rights to, and it only taps into the Kern Water Bank during dry years.
“The Wonderful Company uses less than 1% of the state’s water and does so as part of a community of farmers and ranchers who together produce a quarter of our nation’s food – in our case, only healthy food,” Seth Oster, chief corporate affairs officer for the Wonderful Company, told CBS News.
What does this have to do with the Los Angeles-area fires?
The Resnicks’ water rights have not affected Los Angeles’ water supply throughout the wildfire crisis.
In a severe drought, Los Angeles County or the city might request to draw water from the Kern Water Bank. However, all of the reservoirs the city and county rely on in Southern California are currently at or above historical averages, according to the California Department of Water Resources.
“What’s happening in L.A. is not because there’s not enough water in L.A. in storage,” Marcus told CBS News. “There are no urban water systems that are built out to handle a firestorm like this.”
Marcus concedes the state’s water system has issues — including difficulty enforcing restrictions, confusing rules and regulations and a tiered system that gives more privileges to more senior rights holders.
“There are issues with the water right system in California, I want to be clear on that, they’re just not [related to] this fire,” she said.
Cait Bladt is a writer and producer with the CBS News Confirmed team based in New York.
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