Want to Understand California's Water Crisis? Look to the Pistachio.

"In 2009, Wall Street had just imploded, and the Mojave Desert town of Victorville, California-sunblasted, shoddily constructed, and abruptly abandoned-was one of the housing bubble's most spectacular wipeouts. But amid the boarded-up McMansions and tumbleweed-traversed deserted culs-de-sac, the journalist Yasha Levine stumbled upon an entirely different story. Seeking water, a drought-stricken Victorville bulk-purchased enough to supply as many as 30,000 families for a year. The arrangement gave Levine pause: Since when did a public resource like water come with a deed? That question unspooled into the reporting behind his new documentary, Pistachio Wars."

"The Resnicks are the type of outlandish characters who can only really exist in Los Angeles. Marketing protégé Lynda was born to movie impresario Jack Harris, who directed The Blob. Her personal photocopier was used to leak the Pentagon Papers. Meanwhile Stewart, who had his fingers in a variety of entrepreneurial pies, met Lynda after seeking her out for marketing help at his security firm, which was later busted for smuggling blocks of heroin through LAX."

Pistachio Wars follows reporting into how Stewart and Lynda Resnick and the Wonderful Company built massive agribusiness power by acquiring water rights across California. The film traces a discovery in drought-stricken Victorville, where bulk purchases of groundwater raised the question of private deeds for public water. The Resnicks own major consumer brands and leverage wealth, corporate structures, and influence to secure water for large-scale farming. Personal histories and business practices intersect with political and economic systems to enable consolidation of water resources. The concentration of water control reshapes agricultural priorities and has significant consequences for local communities and ecosystems.

Read at The Nation