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<p class=storyheadline style='margin-top:0in;line-height:normal'><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>How Limousine
Liberals, Water Oligarchs and Even Sean Hannity Are Hijacking Our Water Supply<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=storyheadline style='margin-top:0in;line-height:normal'><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>AlterNet-11/19/09<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=storyheadline style='margin-top:0in;line-height:normal'><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>By Yasha Levine<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=storyheadline style='margin-top:0in;line-height:normal'><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>A
group of water oligarchs in California have engineered a disastrous
deregulation and privatization scheme. And they've pulled in hundreds of
millions of taxpayer dollars without causing much public outrage. The amount of
power and control they wield over California's most precious resource, water,
should shock and frighten us -- and it would, if more people were aware of it. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>But
here is the scary thing: They are plotting to gain an even larger share of
California's increasingly-scarce, over-tapped water supply, which will surely
lead to shortages, higher prices and untold destruction to California's
environment. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>California
is in year three of a fairly nasty dry spell. And some very powerful forces are
not letting this mini-crisis go to waste, fiercely lobbying Governor
Schwarzenegger and Senator Dianne Feinstein, paying off corporate shills like
Fox News' Sean Hannity and capitalizing on people's fear of drought to push a massive
waterworks project that will pump more water, build more dams and keep sucking
the state's rivers dry. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
fearmongering schtick goes like this: California is on the brink of a water
crisis of cataclysmic proportions, with a life-or-death struggle just around
the corner, pitting small farmers who want to save their livelihood against big
city elitists who care more about the environment than they do about American
jobs. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>But
in reality, this drought hysteria is nothing more than political theatrics, a
scare tactic backed by big agribusiness to strong-arm California voters into
building a multi-billion dollar system of dams and canals that would not really
help small farmers -- of which there are very few anyway -- but would deliver
more water to corporations, subsidize their landholdings, fuel real estate
development and enable large-scale water privatization. At its core, it is a
war waged for water by California's megarich on everyone else. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
leader of these recent water privatization efforts in California is a Beverly
Hills billionaire named Stewart Resnick. Stewart and his wife, Lynda Resnick,
own Roll International Corporation, a private umbrella company that controls
the flowers-by-wire company Teleflora, Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful, pesticide
manufacturer Suterra and Paramount Agribusiness, the largest farming company in
America and the largest pistachio and almond producer in the world. Roll Corp.
was ranked #246 on Forbes' list of America's largest private companies in 2008
and had an estimated revenue of $1.98 billion in 2007. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>They
are a limousine liberal power couple. Hyperactive in politics, business and
philanthropy, the two raise huge amounts of cash for the Democratic party,
donate to the arts, support education and hobnob with influential progressives
like Arianna Huffington and the anti-global warming activist and producer of An
Inconvenient Truth, Laurie David. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Stewart
Resnick gave over $350,000 to the Gray Davis campaign and various anti-recall groups
between 2000 and 2003, a favor Governor Davis returned by appointing Resnick to
co-chair his agriculture-water transition team. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>A
shrewd businesswoman, Lynda is credited with single-handedly creating the
pomegranate health fad to sell her Pom Wonderful and catapulted Fiji Water to
its recent success, one that environmentalists love to hate as was recently
documented in Mother Jones by Anna Lenzer. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>But
there is a gaping hole in most accounts of the jet-set Baby Boomer couple:
their company, Roll International, is one of the largest, if not the largest,
private water brokers in America. Through a series of subsidiary companies and
organizations, Roll International is able to convert California's water from a
public, shared resource into a private asset that can be sold on the market to
the highest bidder. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>It
all comes down to Stewart Resnick's involvement in the creation of a powerful
but little-known entity called the Kern County Water Bank -- an underground
water storage facility at the center of a plan to bring deregulation to
California's most important public utility: water. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>According
to a 2003 Public Citizen report titled "Water Heist," the Kern County
Water Bank is an underground reservoir in the hottest, driest, southernmost
edge of the Central Valley with a capacity of 1 million acre-feet, enough to
convert the entire state of Rhode Island into a swampland one-foot deep or
supply the City of Los Angeles with water for 1.7 years. The water bank was
envisioned in the late '80s by the Department of Water Resources as a safeguard
against prolonged drought. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>During
wet years, it would serve as a repository for excess water coming in from
Northern California and the Sierras, and pumped out in dry years. California
spent nearly a hundred million dollars to develop the underground reservoir and
connect it to the state's public canals and aqueducts, but in 1995,
California's Department of Water Resources suddenly, and without any public
debate, transferred it to a handful of corporate interests.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Byron
Leydecker, JcT</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Chair, Friends
of Trinity River</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>PO Box 2327</span></i><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Mill Valley, CA
94942-2327</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 383 4810
land</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 519 4810
cell</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
href="mailto:bwl3@comcast.net"><span style='color:blue'>bwl3@comcast.net</span></a></span></i></b><b><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
href="mailto:bleydecker@stanfordalumni.org"><span style='color:blue'>bleydecker@stanfordalumni.org</span></a>
</span></i></b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>(secondary)</span></i><b><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
href="http://fotr.org/"><span style='color:blue'>http://www.fotr.org</span></a>
</span></i></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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