No, Billionaire Couple Does Not 'Own Most of California's

Since the beginning of the January 2025 fires around Los Angeles, claims circulated that one billionaire couple owned “most of California’s water,” with some people implying they were hoarding it from firefighting efforts.
However, the claims revealed a misunderstanding of California’s complex water system, part of which is privatized.
While the couple owned a majority stake in one of California’s water banks, the bank did not represent most of California’s water for urban and agricultural use.
Los Angeles did not acquire water from that specific water bank.

As several wildfires ravaged the Los Angeles area in January 2025 and firefighters faced difficulties accessing water, rumors began to spread that a billionaire couple, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, owned the largest amount of available water in California, with some posts suggesting they were hoarding it, hindering access to water in firefighting efforts.

For example, a TikTok video posted Jan. 10 claimed the Resnicks owned “the aquifers of California” (archived):

Other videos on TikTok made the claim that the couple owned “most of California’s water.” Some accounts even claimed that the couple was hoarding water, with one alleging that they were selling it for triple the cost during the wildfires.

The claims were false, however, revealing a misunderstanding of California’s complex water system. They were based on a 2022 report by More Perfect Union, a self-described progressive news outlet. The More Perfect Union X account reshared the 2-year-old video on Jan. 8, 2025, as the Los Angeles fires gathered strength. Further, as it spread, the rumor became tinged with antisemitism, as the targeted couple is Jewish.

It is true that for years, the water system in California has been at the center of a controversy regarding its partly privatized water storage and management. However, the Resnicks do not, in fact, control the majority of the state’s water, nor were they hoarding it from the city of Los Angeles during wildfires.

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California’s Water System

Max Gomberg of the California Water Impact Network told Snopes that no one entity in California owns the water outright. In reality, California’s water is held in trust for the benefit of the people of the state. However, California privatized part of the storage and management of the state’s water in 1994, with the Monterey Plus Agreement.

California uses a long-term average of 40 million acre-feet of water each year, according to Gomberg and the nonpartisan think tank Public Policy Institute of California. According to the institute, the agricultural sector uses “approximately 40% of the state’s water, or 80% of all water used by homes and businesses.” That corresponds to 32 million acre-feet for agriculture. The remaining 8 millions go to urban use — water used for drinking, cooking, sanitation, as well as firefighting efforts.

As part of the agreement, the Resnicks’ Wonderful Co. (formerly known Roll Global) became part owner of the Kern Water Bank Authority. As such, the couple’s corporation controls 57.7% of the water storage facility, which can hold up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water — about 3.75% of California’s water. The chairman of the board of the Kern Water Bank Authority is William Phillimore, an employee of the Westside Mutual Water Co., which is a subsidiary of The Wonderful Co.

The Wonderful Co. is one of the country’s largest farming companies by acreage, with 140,000 acres — most of which are in California, a company spokeswoman told Snopes via email. It also owns some land in Texas and Mexico. The Los Angeles-headquartered, privately owned company is worth $6 billion, according to its website.

The Resnicks Are Not Hoarding Water from LA Firefighting Efforts

As for claims that the Resnicks were hoarding water, hindering firefighting efforts in Los Angeles, further investigation revealed this was not the case.

In response to the claims, Wonderful published a statement on Jan. 12, 2025, denying that the company controlled most of the water in California. Further, it said that while the Kern Water Bank Authority supplies water to Kern County’s farmers and the “municipal water needs of the city of Bakersfield,” it had not sold water to the state in almost 20 years. In a telephone exchange, a company spokeswoman confirmed the details in this report to Snopes.

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Southern California relies on the Metropolitan Water District of California, a water wholesaler. Metropolitan supplies water to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Metropolitan spokeswoman Rebecca Kimitch told Snopes the company imports water from the Colorado River and the Northern Sierra. “Metropolitan has more water in storage than ever before in its history,” Kimitch said, implying that the wholesaler would not have needed to acquire water from the Kern Water Bank Authority.

Kimitch added that other sources of water for the Southern California region include the Eastern Sierra, the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which does not pass through the Bakersfield area, and also groundwater, recycled-water facilities and a desalination plant in San Diego. We have contacted the L.A. water department for more details and we will update this story should we receive a response.

Sources:

California | Economic Impact of Agriculture. https://economic-impact-of-ag.uada.edu/california/. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.

Gibler, John. Water Heist: How Corporations Are Cashing In On California’s Water. Public Citizen, https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/water_heist_lo-res.pdf.

‘Max Gomberg’. California Water Impact Network, https://www.c-win.org/maxgomberg. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.

Null, Sarah, et al. Storing Water for the Environment. https://www.ppic.org/publication/storing-water-for-the-environment/.

Peterson, Caitlin, et al. Water Use in California’s Agriculture. Public Policy Institute of California, https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-californias-agriculture/.

Rodriguez, Robert. ‘Paramount Farms Parent Company Renamed The Wonderful Company’. The Fresno Bee, 2 June 2015, https://www.fresnobee.com/news/business/agriculture/article22833957.html.

‘The Monterey Amendments’. California Water Impact Network, https://www.c-win.org/the-monterey-amendments. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.

The Wonderful Company :: Who We Are. https://www.wonderful.com/who-we-are/. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.

The Wonderful Company :: WONDERFUL’S RESPONSE TO VIRAL CONSPIRACIES CLAIMING CONNECTION TO CALIFORNIA WATER RESOURCES AND THE TRAGIC FIRES IN LOS ANGELES. https://www.wonderful.com/press/the-wonderful-company-california-water-facts-2025/. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.

‘William Phillimore’. Kern Water Bank Authority, https://www.kwb.org/william-phillimore. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.

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