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In the golden hills of California, the air is thick with smoke and I bet your wondering who's to blame. Why politicians are blaming Mother nature, reality lays the blame elsewhere. Once-vibrant communities in places like the Palisades and Altadena are now charred landscapes, the victims of an unrelenting wildfire season. On the surface, the fires seem like a cruel inevitability in a warming world. But dig deeper, and the real culprit emerges: California’s broken water system. A system manipulated by billionaires and worsened by failed leadership, leaving entire cities vulnerable to devastation that could have been avoided.
Who Owns the Water?
To understand California’s water crisis, you have to start with one glaring truth: water in this state is not just a resource—it’s a commodity. And few people have benefited from this commodification as much as Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the billionaire owners of The Wonderful Company.
While their name might not be familiar, their products—POM Wonderful, Fiji Water, and millions of pounds of almonds and pistachios—most certainly are. The Resnicks control more water than most cities in California. In the Central Valley, where they grow water-hungry crops, they’ve amassed staggering groundwater rights, pumping millions of gallons while nearby towns struggle to keep their taps running.
In a state plagued by drought, this private hoarding of water isn’t just immoral—it’s lethal. When corporations like The Wonderful Company treat water as a private resource to grow luxury crops, the state’s fragile ecosystem bears the cost. Rivers dry up. Aquifers shrink. Urban areas, already strained, are left with fewer resources to fight fires or sustain life.
Wildfires Fueled by Greed
This corporate stranglehold on water isn’t an abstract problem; it’s fueling the fires that now consume California. In the Palisades and Altadena, where the hillsides are naturally prone to wildfires, the absence of sufficient water resources has turned these events into disasters. Dry vegetation, exacerbated by years of drought, becomes the perfect fuel. And when fires ignite, the limited availability of water for firefighting stretches resources dangerously thin.
These fires aren’t natural disasters—they’re man-made catastrophes. Every gallon of water diverted to pistachio orchards is a gallon not used to keep California’s landscapes hydrated, its reservoirs full, or its firefighters equipped to battle infernos.
The Leadership We Deserved but Never Got
California didn’t have to burn. The water crisis, and the wildfires it worsens, could have been prevented with bold, decisive leadership. But instead of standing up to corporate water barons, California’s leaders have repeatedly caved. Laws regulating groundwater pumping remain weak. Taxpayer-funded water projects have prioritized agriculture over urban needs. And campaigns financed by billionaires like the Resnicks have ensured that the status quo remains firmly intact.
True leadership would have looked like this:
Taking Back Public Control: Water is not a luxury—it’s a human right. By reclaiming groundwater and treating it as a public resource, California could ensure that cities and ecosystems come first.
Regulating Agricultural Water Use: Almonds and pistachios may be lucrative exports, but no crop is worth the cost of burned homes and displaced families. Restricting water use for high-demand crops during drought years should have been a no-brainer.
Investing in Fire Resilience: With proper planning, we could have maintained healthy forests, created firebreaks, and ensured water access for firefighting efforts. Instead, we let the system fail.
The Human Cost of Inaction
When we talk about California’s water crisis, it’s easy to get lost in the data—the acre-feet of water pumped, the billions of dollars made by agribusiness, the millions of acres burned. But this isn’t just a numbers game. It’s a human tragedy.
In Altadena, families are packing what little they can into cars as flames lick closer to their homes. In the Palisades, firefighters are working 16-hour shifts, sweating through their gear, knowing they don’t have the water pressure they need. Across the state, people are breathing air so thick with smoke it feels like a punishment just to step outside.
And meanwhile, the Resnicks continue to grow their empire, their orchards drinking deeply from the groundwater that should belong to all of us.
A Future That Doesn’t Have to Burn
This doesn’t have to be our reality. California has the tools to fix this crisis—but only if we demand it. We need leaders who are willing to stand up to corporations like The Wonderful Company and reclaim control of our water. We need policies that prioritize people and the environment over profit. And we need a public that refuses to accept fires, droughts, and water shortages as inevitable.
California is burning, but it doesn’t have to. The smoke-filled skies and scorched earth are not acts of God—they are failures of leadership. And they are failures we must not allow to continue.
Michael P.
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