I very much liked this story on how large agribusiness came to control the Kern Water Bank. I’ve not seen it so clearly presented before.
Couple thoughts:
- How I love watching large players turn on each other. Even if I don’t support either of their interests, I do enjoy watching the sharks fight.
- The story mentions that the controllers of the Kern Water Bank, especially Roll Call International (who is Paramont Farms, who are the Resnicks, who make the pomegranate juice that you shouldn’t buy in stores anymore) are permitted to sell water to LA, rather than farm
The Monterey Agreements permit water contractors to resell the water they receive from the State Water Project. This means they become middlemen making profits on state-supplied water. If they choose to, they can dry up vast areas of productive agriculture and ship the water to municipalities south of the Tehachapi range. A coalition of agriculturalists and environmentalists has brought suit to challenge this.
If they were to sell water to LA rather than farm, would we be hearing from the Latino Water Coalition? Would there be faux-farmworker marches on a well-head in Kern County? Would there be estimates of tens of thousands of idled farmworkers? Of course there would not, since all that turmoil was created by public relations firms funded by Roll Call International.
- I wondered who wrote such a clear and fearless piece. Aren’t all growers cowed by the Resnicks? Apparently not retired UCLA professors who farm up near headwaters in Northern California. People in those fortunate and secure circumstances can write all the stories about the Resnicks they want. How nice that agriculture is still big enough to include people with such different backgrounds.
On the public record 