Why California Sold Its Water to Two Billionaires

• Meet the Resniks, a billionaire couple controlling more water than LA uses in a year.
• They are the world's second richest farm owners with land four times the size of San Francisco.
• Their wealth, stemming from crops like pistachios and almonds, has raised questions about their water usage.
• The recent California wildfires have sparked allegations linking the Resniks to environmental issues.
• This story reveals state betrayal, political favors, and secret deals influencing water rights in California.

Hi, welcome to another episode of Cold Fusion. Meet the Resnik, a billionaire couple who controls more water than LA uses in an entire year. Think about that. 3.8 million people showering, drinking and flushing all of that water. And yet two people, the Resniks, use more water than all of them combined.

So who are they? Well, long story short, they’re the world's second richest farm owners. The amount of land the Resniks own is baffling. For context, by 2024, they owned so much land that it amounted to four times the size of San Francisco. Mind-boggling how just two people could own all of that.

Their names haven't been in the headlines until now. With the recent events of the California wildfires, people now think that their thirst for power and profits may have contributed to the disaster. The media defends them, the Resniks cry a conspiracy, and the public demands answers.

This episode started off as research into how the Resniks were connected to the wildfires. But it turned into something much greater. A story of state betrayal, political favor, secret deals, and a plot against Iran. You are watching Cold Fusion TV.

Thanks to their pistachio, almond, and citrus empire, the Resniks are now worth a combined US$13 billion. And this proves that in fact, sometimes money does grow on trees. You’ve likely heard of some of the Resniks’ products before. Does Fiji Water ring a bell? So with land four times the size of San Francisco, all of those crops don’t grow by themselves. They need water. And a lot of it.

In 2016, their company, called the Wonderful Company, used more water on their 15 million trees than any other family, farm, or company in California. But here’s the thing. As we all know, California famously has had a lot of droughts since the 1980s. And under state water law, urban areas are prioritized during those droughts. So it begs the question, how in these conditions were the Resniks able to grow and expand hundreds of thousands of acres of water guzzling crops?

Here’s a clue. It wasn’t in a good way. They manipulated California law into doing their bidding. This allowed them to access more water than every household in LA combined, in fact, more than anyone in the West. The question isn’t just how they did it, but why in the 30 years since it all went down has no one done anything about it?

But we’ll get to all of that a bit later. For now, we must know how it all started. Stuart Resnick is the richest farmer in America. But he wasn't born into farming, nor does he live on a farm. Born in 1936 in New Jersey, the son of a bar owner with a chronic gambling problem, Steuart grew up in an imperfect household. Despite this, he did manage to study law at UCLA. To pay for it, Steuart started a janitorial business.

This was followed by a security alarm business. And this is where he met and married Leinda, an advertising executive. Together they were unstoppable, demonstrating a real talent for buying and flipping businesses. This made them millions. Some of these businesses include Terrafloora, a flower delivery service, Franklin Mint, which sold fake copies of the pearl necklaces John F.Kennedy's wife would wear, and also, since 2004, Fiji Water.

Meanwhile, American oil companies were desperate to offload land on top of their oil reserves, giving it away for cheap in places like Kern County, California. The Resniks, seeing the opportunity, started buying acres upon acres of this land, mostly as a hedge against inflation.

In the 1990s, the Resniks became actively involved in California’s water infrastructure process to keep the water flowing onto their land. By 2008, their orchards became the largest acreage of tree crops worldwide. By 2024, they owned so much land, 185,000 acres, that you could drive for hours and still not pass through at all.

Before we continue down the rabbit hole of the Resniks' many ethical shortcomings, Linda Resnick needs a mention for her ability to turn mundane products into global sensations. Before Linda Resnick, only 4% of Americans had ever tried a pomegranate. As they were growing pomegranate crops, Linda got to work marketing pomegranates as a magical elixir, launching Pom Wonderful Juice.

She funded studies on their effects on bacteria, memory, and cognition. The FTC was not impressed. In a similar vein, Linda rebranded Fiji Water into an exotic celebrity drink, untouched by man. Her marketing increased sales almost overnight, making it the largest imported bottled water brand in the US, despite draining Fijian aquifers to bottle and sell their water, leaving some Fijian locals without a safe water supply.

But now we get into the deep conspiracy. If you're wondering what flower deliveries and a crop producer have to do with Iran, bear with me. I'm going to walk you through how this relates. This one billionaire couple owns a massive share of the state's water system, seized in a series of secretive meetings two decades ago. That system was largely paid for by the very taxpayers whose water these billionaires hold hostage.

Pistachios look like this. They once looked like this. And the most delicious of them was imported from Iran. When the US Embassy was stormed during the Iranian revolution, then President Jimmy Carter blocked all goods from Iran, which included pistachios. The Resniks saw an opportunity. They could cash in on the Iranian pistachio ban.

In 1989, they began growing and harvesting their own. Within 10 years, their sales surpassed $1 billion, and they became the world's largest producer of pistachios and almonds. Their pistachio empire was built on Iranian sanctions. If Iranian US relations improved, their pistachios might lose their edge. So to stop this from happening, they pumped their newfound wealth into think tanks such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. This was to ensure heavy lobbying to keep the sanctions against Iran.

Of course, in the public eye, they tried to keep an arm's length. This shows you the depths they’re willing to go to. But it doesn’t stop there. Together, Stuart and Linda weren’t afraid to pursue aggressive tactics to get what they wanted. Once they threatened their neighbors over bees simply just flying past the new seedless mandarin orchards, demanding that the bees alter their flight path or the neighbors would be sued for trespassing. I guess we get to see Stuart's law degree at work.

But this pales in comparison to what's next. Perhaps the most aggressive of all was a secret meeting in 1994 that would change California forever. Here’s what happened. A secret meeting in Monterey Bay, a water deal that defied logic, and a billionaire couple rewriting California's water laws in their favor.

California's water laws have always been first come, first served. Those who came first and were established had senior water rights, while those who came last had junior water rights. Senior water right holders were the last to be restricted in a drought. The Resniks, though, thought that this system was rigged against them. Every new drought put their luxury crops and lifestyle at risk.

In 1994, Stewart and a group of state water officials, water infrastructure contractors, and agricultural landowners convened in a hotel in Monterey Bay. There, they sat in secrecy and plotted. They came up with an argument for their case to the Department of Water Resources. They claimed that the state was failing at its water delivery obligations. So they offered a solution: transfer the Kern underground aquifer, which can store 500 billion gallons of water, to five public water districts and to Westside Mutual Water Company, which was owned by Mr. Stuart Resnick himself.

The Kern Water Bank was built in the mid-80s on the Resniks' land and was funded with $74 million of taxpayer money. It was designed to be like a savings water account. In wetter years, surplus water could be added, and in droughts, the water could be withdrawn and delivered to places in need. Stuart and co rewrote California's water laws without any input from taxpayers or legislators.

To this day, we really don't know why this all happened. But what we do know is the Resniks came out of this owning a 58% stake in the Kern Water Bank. This was great for the two agricultural billionaires living in Aspen and Beverly Hills. But it was devastating for the people of California, who now found themselves in a new kind of drought. One that didn't just dry their crops, but their wallets and trust in government too.

As part of the deal, in return, the Resniks would forfeit their state water contracts and junior water rights. It was an insane offer—because with an underground aquifer, who would need state water? Stuart Resnick also asked to trade billions of gallons of water for non-existent paper water.

After days of meetings, the state took the bait and agreed to one of the worst deals in California history. The people of California now had to pay a private company for water that was once theirs. Well, at least agriculture is good for the economy, right? Well, not exactly. Agriculture uses 80% of California's water but only represents 2% of California GDP.

Over the next few years, the Resniks doubled their land holdings, pocketed millions selling water back to the state at premium rates, and wielded political connections to secure their hold on the unconstitutional Rippo deal. Of course, to keep the water (and by proxy, money) flowing, the Resniks regularly donated six-figure sums to a plethora of California governors and became the top donors of the University of California, funding ecological studies on water management to tell the story they wanted to tell.

Converting people's water into products that most can afford is ethically questionable. But their absolute domination is something to behold. In 2023, urban water systems received just 5% of the water they needed from the state. Meanwhile, the Resniks used over 1 billion gallons of water for their pomegranates, almonds, and pistachios, which are particularly water-intensive. One single almond requires up to 1.1 gallons to produce, and it goes on.

According to a NASA expert, the ground of the San Joaquin Valley is sinking due to excessive groundwater pumping. And Kern County was one of the most affected regions. 2025 introduced a new chapter into the Resnik's controversial legacy. California's famed coastline flattened and charred. The scale of this disaster is hard to comprehend. Pretty devastating. I don't think LA has seen anything like this before.

I hope in the future we can find a way to maybe even better prepare or prevent this from happening again. During the LA wildfires, anger towards the Resniks hit a fever pitch, with many accusing the couple of hoarding water and, in turn, exacerbating the fires. The Resniks call this a "viral conspiracy," insisting that they have nothing to do with the water supplied to Los Angeles. According to them, they use less than 1% of California's water in their agricultural business.

So did the Resniks' practices have any impact on the fires? Experts are divided. While California's wildfires are mainly caused by hotter and drier conditions, some argue that the Resniks’ monopoly over water has made the state more vulnerable to drought.

They siphon taxpayer dollars into the company town charter schools they own, set up to train children to work for their farms. And, like any company of this size, they exploit their workers. We need to treat water for what it is—a necessary public resource, a human right, and something that shouldn’t be owned by anyone. We need to work towards legislative change that stops people like the Resniks from stealing it.

Others, however, insist that wildfire prevention policies, not agriculture, are the real problem. But the $101 million that they did cut in 2024 raises questions about allocation. The breakdown reveals 28 million from wildfire resilience efforts, 12 million from a home hardening experiment for wildfire protection, 8 million from monitoring and research programs at Cal Fire and universities, 4 million from the Forest Legacy Program in private land management, and 3 million from an interagency resource data hub. But that adds up to only $55 million. Where is the other $46 million?

Now we have this reservoir and Palisades. This is the reservoir. This is Palisades. The reservoir is roughly one mile away from where the fire was. So let me get this straight. This reservoir, if we put up images, fits 117 million gallons of water. The stat we hear about is three separate tanks that held up to 1 million gallons of water. This reservoir fits 117 million and they've had it shut down since last February of 2024. Why was it shut down? What about all of the water in the Kern Water Bank? Shouldn’t they distribute it to help fight the fires?

According to officials, Los Angeles gets its water from a network of 114 tanks, all fully filled before the fire broke out. So the water from Kern Water Bank wasn’t required. A lack of water was not the issue, but it was the city's residential water system that struggled to deliver such large volumes of water simultaneously across multiple areas.

And what if Los Angeles needed Resnick water? The state constitution bans unreasonable water use, which means the government could step in if they thought someone was hoarding the water during a crisis. So technically, yes, Los Angeles could withdraw water from the Kern Water Bank. But there's no need for now.

On January 15, 2025, the Wonderful Company owned by the Resniks announced a $10 million pledge to support wildfire relief efforts. Is that enough to correct a fair few wrongs? Regardless, at the heart of this story is a simple question: Should billionaires be able to buy and sell water like a private asset?

Why did no one do anything when the laws were manipulated since 1994? What about the political donations? Will they ever be investigated? Should California's water laws finally be rewritten? Let me know what you think in the comments section below.

So that is the story of the secretive billionaires who managed to have as much water as they wanted. The Resniks may have bent the rules and scammed LA and Fiji out of their public water. But in the world today, there are plenty of other, smaller scammers. You’ve probably come into contact with scam calls, text messages, and various phishing attempts. But why does this happen to you?

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That’s about it from me. Thanks for watching. My name is Daggogo and you've been watching Cold Fusion. If you did like this episode, feel free to subscribe. There's plenty of interesting stuff on here about science, technology, business, and other interesting topics. Alright, so I'll see you again soon for the next episode. Cheers, guys. Have a good one. Cold Fusion: it's new thinking.