Water tanks went dry in Pacific Palisades, hampering efforts to fight fire

Three tanks and some fire hydrants temporarily lost water because of high demand. Experts said the system wasn’t built to fight a major blaze like this one.

Jan. 9, 2025, 1:56 AM GMT+1
By Aria Bendix

Immense demand for water to fight the fast-moving Palisades Fire led all three of the community’s water tanks — and some fire hydrants — to temporarily dry up in the last 24 hours or so.

That hampered efforts to fight the blaze, said the Los Angeles Fire Department said, which didn’t elaborate on the specific challenges or how it addressed them.

The Palisades Fire, which broke out Tuesday morning, is still 0% contained. More than 15,000 acres have burned, and tens of thousands of people have been evacuated. An estimated 1,000 structures have been destroyed, making the fire the most destructive in L.A. history.

Firefighters battling the Eaton Fire in the nearby Altadena area also reported that hydrants there were down or had low water pressure.

https://www.nbcnews.com/weather/wildfires/california-fire-water-tanks-went-dry-palisades-rcna186860

Now that everybody is talking about the fires ripping through Los Angeles, and water tanks going dry in the affected areas, it might be a good time to spotlight the crooked jews that control California's water supply:

How This Billionaire Couple Stole California’s Water Supply

In a series of secret meetings in 1994, the Resnicks seized control of California’s public water supply. Now they’ve built a business empire by selling it back to working people.

Anthony Mascorro & Sean Morrow
December 28, 2022

[color="Red"]While 40 million Californians suffer through unprecedented drought, one billionaire couple owns a massive share of the state’s water system, largely 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.

[color="Red"]Urban water systems are desperate for water, but in 2023 they’ll receive just 5% of what they requested from the state. Stewart and Lydia Resnick use 150 billion gallons a year.

Journalist: “I wonder how you’re thinking about water for your businesses?”

Lynda Resnick: “We’re thinking about water 24/7. Okay? I don’t want to get into a drought discussion right now because it’s really off topic but it is serious and a lot of people have suffered… It’s a tough time for people with no rain. But you know, our climate is in terrible jeopardy but we don’t wanna go there right now, we all know that, right.”

The Resnicks are the biggest farmers in California–as of 2007 they owned four San Francisco’s worth of farmland.

And nearly half of Americans buy at least one of their products: Their pistachios, their pomegranate Juice, their mandarins, their flowers

It’s all under one massive umbrella: The Wonderful Company, a privately owned company worth at least 5 billion dollars. The majority owners, the Resnicks, are worth at least 8 billion.

How were they able to take over such a large percentage of what should be a shared public resource?
(...)
In 1994 state water officials, water infrastructure contractors, and agricultural landowners with water rights arranged a secretive meeting at a resort in Monterey Bay California.

These groups, a mix of private companies and public agencies, rewrote California’s water laws without any input from voters, taxpayers, or legislators. The new laws, called The Monterey Plus Agreement or The Monterey Amendments were devastating for working Californians and great for agriculture billionaires.

The original law had “urban preference” a long-standing rule that in times of drought the state water board would give urban areas–where people live–access to state water supplies before agricultural interests. Monterey axed that. That means that in times of drought the water systems for normal Californians would have to buy water from the private companies, because they weren’t getting it from the state.

The new agreement also loosened regulations on “paper water.” That’s water that doesn’t necessarily actually exist anywhere but on paper: the full quantities of water that providers could have, but don’t actually need to have. Today 5x as much water has been promised and sold as actually exists.

And importantly, the meeting changed ownership of the Kern Water Bank. What once belonged to the state was transferred to a few private water contractors. One of which was Westside Mutual, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wonderful Foods. The Wonderful employee who runs Westside, Bill Phillimore, is the chairman of the ‘public’ organization that manages the Kern Water Bank.

Boom. One secret meeting and the Resnicks owned nearly 60% of an important California water resource, built with hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money.

The new ownership combined with the rules on paper and surplus water meant that during times of drought the Resnicks could sell Kern water back to the state water systems.

They took Californian taxpayers’ water and sold it back to them– both literally as the water supply, and also to grow expensive food like gourmet pistachios and pomegranate juice. They converted the peoples’ water into products many can’t afford.

https://perfectunion.us/how-this-billionaire-couple-stole-californias-water-supply/

Amid Drought, Billionaires Control A Critical California Water Bank

Chloe Sorvino Forbes Staff
Chloe Sorvino is a New York-based Forbes staff writer who covers food.

Sep 20, 2021,10:35am EDT
Updated Oct 11, 2021, 05:07pm EDT

Water prices are soaring in California’s Central Valley, where a quarter of the nation’s food is grown. As the West Coast’s megadrought worsens, one farming company has long been scrutinized for its outsize role in the arid region’s water supply.

[color="Red"]Wonderful, the closely held company owned by billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick, can buy up huge amounts of water whenever it needs more. Most of the Resnicks’ water comes from long-term contracts and other water from land rights they have from the farms they own. Around 9% of the total water used by Wonderful is bought out on the open water market. While that’s not a huge amount of the water it uses, the company can outspend pretty much every other farmer in the region, which can influence water prices.
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[color="Red"]The Resnicks’ storage arrangement is controversial. “They have been banking water by using public and private dollars to corral a public resource. Because of their water rights and their wealth, they are insulating themselves from the drought,” says Char Miller, the director of environmental analysis at Pomona College. “Private capital has no problem with the drought, while the rest of us do. That’s one of the deep social divides.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2021/09/20/amid-drought-billionaires-control-a-critical-california-water-bank/

Stewart Allen Resnick[1] (born December 24, 1936) is an American billionaire businessman. Resnick is[color="red"] the wealthiest farmer in the United States[2][3] with a net worth exceeding eight billion dollars as of 2022.[4]
(...)
Resnick was born in 1936,[9] and raised in a middle-class [color="red"]Jewish family[10] in New Jersey and later moved to California with his family in the 1950s.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Resnick

Lynda Rae Resnick (born 1943[1]) is an American billionaire businesswoman. Resnick is married to Stewart Resnick, who is her business partner, and through their holding company, The Wonderful Company, they own the POM Wonderful and Fiji Water brands, Wonderful Pistachios and Almonds, Wonderful Halos, Wonderful Seedless Lemons, JUSTIN Wines, Landmark Wines, JNSQ Wines, and the Teleflora floral wire service company.[3]
(...)
Resnick was born Lynda Rae Harris[4] to a [color="Red"]Jewish family in Baltimore, Maryland,[5][6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynda_Resnick