666 - Re-release - The Resnicks: Water Monsters

Summary

Summary of The Dollop Episode 666: "The Resnicks: Water Monsters"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds
• Host/Author: All Things Comedy
• Description: Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds pick a subject from history and examine it.
• Episode Number: 666 - Re-release
• Release Date: January 14, 2025

---

Introduction

In Episode 666 titled "The Resnicks: Water Monsters," hosts Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds delve into the intricate and controversial history of Stuart and Linda Resnick. This in-depth exploration reveals how the Resnicks amassed significant control over California's water resources and agricultural sectors, leading to profound environmental and socio-economic impacts. Due to unforeseen logistical issues caused by recent fires in California, the hosts opted to re-release this pivotal episode instead of producing a new one, emphasizing the episode's relevance in the current context.

---

Early Beginnings of Stuart and Linda Resnick

Stuart Resnick’s Rise to Power ([03:36])

Stuart Resnick, born on December 24, 1936, in Middlebush, New Jersey, was raised in a turbulent household where his father, a bar owner, exhibited heavy gambling habits. This unstable environment instilled in Stuart a penchant for risk-taking. After relocating west in 1960, Stuart attended UCLA, where he co-founded a successful cleaning business. As Gareth quips, "That's how much of a gambler he was" ([04:05]), highlighting Stuart's audacious business ventures.

Linda Ray Harris Resnick’s Foray into Advertising ([07:00])

Linda Ray Harris, born in 1942 in Philadelphia, moved to Los Angeles at 15 when her father became a movie producer. Contrary to her aspirations to attend art school, Linda established her own advertising agency, Linda Limited, by the age of 24 despite being divorced with three children. Her strategic marketing skills became a cornerstone for the Resnicks' expanding empire.

---

Monopolizing Water: The Kern Water Bank

Strategic Acquisition of Water Rights ([10:07])

During California’s severe droughts in the late 1970s, the Resnicks capitalized on plummeting land prices to acquire vast tracts of agricultural land in Kern County. By 1987, they owned over 100,000 acres of pistachios and almonds. Gareth humorously notes, "They are selling water that doesn't exist" ([20:53]), referring to the Resnicks' manipulation of water rights.

The Paper Water Scheme ([21:00])

In a covert 1994 deal, Stuart Resnick proposed transferring the Kern Water Bank to his Westside Mutual Water Company, effectively creating "paper water" — legal claims to non-existent water resources. Dave emphasizes the absurdity, stating, "It's fucking ridiculous" ([15:55]). This maneuver allowed the Resnicks to claim additional water rights without actual water, giving them undue advantage during droughts.

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Expansion into Bottled Water: Fiji Water

Acquisition and Marketing ([34:04])

In 2004, the Resnicks acquired Fiji Water, positioning it as a premium bottled water brand. By aggressively marketing to celebrities and featuring it in major media outlets, Fiji Water became the number one selling bottled water in the U.S. Gareth mocks the environmental disregard, saying, "They are selling water that doesn't exist" ([20:53]), referring back to their earlier schemes.

Environmental and Ethical Controversies ([43:36])

The Resnicks faced backlash for Fiji Water's environmental impact, including plastic pollution and exploitation of Fiji's natural resources. Linda attempted damage control with slogans like "Every drop is green" ([43:27]), but environmental activists criticized the company's practices, highlighting the hypocrisy in their marketing efforts.

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Impact on Local Communities and the Environment

Water Scarcity and Land Subsidence ([48:17])

The Resnicks' extensive water usage, particularly during droughts, led to significant depletion of California’s aquifers. By pumping over 400,000 acre-feet of water annually for their orchards, they surpassed even the water consumption of major cities like Los Angeles. Gareth sarcastically remarks, "You just need to list how much water each product takes" ([48:37]), underscoring the unsustainable nature of their operations.

Exploitation of Farm Workers ([63:08])

In regions like Lost Hills, Kern County, farm workers endured substandard living conditions, relying on overpriced bottled water due to contaminated tap sources. The Resnicks' dominance forced workers to allocate a substantial portion of their meager wages to sustain basic necessities. Dave expresses frustration, "They have to buy bottled water which costs them $50 to $100 a month while working for the number one water bottlers in the world" ([63:08]).

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Philanthropy and Public Image Rehabilitation

Philanthropic Ventures ([62:56])

To mitigate their tarnished reputation, the Resnicks invested heavily in philanthropy, funding scholarships, building schools, and launching wellness programs for their workers. Gareth highlights the superficial nature of these efforts, saying, "This is just like Jonestown" ([52:10]), implying coercion rather than genuine altruism.

Marketing "Doing Good" ([69:00])

Despite facing legal challenges and public outcry, the Resnicks continued to present themselves as benevolent philanthropists. Linda proclaimed, "Our company has always believed that success means doing well by doing good" ([69:11]), a statement met with skepticism given their ongoing exploitative practices.

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Political Influence and Legal Manipulations

Lobbying and Influence ([40:18])

Through substantial donations to political figures and advocacy groups, the Resnicks exerted significant influence over water policies in California. This financial clout enabled them to evade regulations and perpetuate their monopolistic control over water resources. Dave criticizes the corruption, stating, "The power to buy state deals has allowed them to keep expanding" ([40:18]).

Suppression of Environmental Protections ([77:00])

The Resnicks actively worked to undermine environmental protections, particularly those safeguarding the delta smelt, an indicator species crucial to the ecosystem's health. By influencing legislation and funding political campaigns, they ensured favorable outcomes that prioritized their interests over environmental sustainability.

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Environmental and Economic Consequences

Ecological Degradation ([85:00])

The Resnicks' relentless water extraction led to severe ecological repercussions, including land subsidence, damaged infrastructure, and the decline of native species. The depletion of aquifers not only threatened the environment but also jeopardized the livelihoods of countless farmers reliant on these water sources.

Economic Strain on Communities ([87:19])

Local communities faced mounting economic pressures as water scarcity forced residents to spend exorbitant amounts on bottled water and struggle with deteriorating infrastructure. Gareth poignantly remarks, "We just are not allowed to be shocked when we live in Mad Max" ([87:43]), highlighting the dystopian reality imposed by the Resnicks' actions.

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Conclusion

Episode 666 of "The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds" offers a scathing critique of the Resnicks' monopolistic and environmentally destructive practices. Through a blend of humor and investigative storytelling, the hosts shed light on how Stuart and Linda Resnick's manipulation of water resources and political influence wreaked havoc on California's environment and marginalized communities. This episode serves as a compelling case study on the dangers of unchecked corporate power and the critical need for stringent environmental and regulatory oversight.

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Notable Quotes:

• Dave: "That's how much of a gambler he was" ([04:05])
• Gareth: "If you don't like it, you're a Dallas hole" ([00:43])
• Dave: "They are selling water that doesn't exist" ([20:53])
• Gareth: "You just need to list how much water each product takes" ([48:37])
• Dave: "They have to buy bottled water which costs them $50 to $100 a month while working for the number one water bottlers in the world" ([63:08])
• Gareth: "This is just like Jonestown" ([52:10])

---

Key Takeaways:

1. Monopolization of Water Resources: The Resnicks strategically acquired vast water rights in California, enabling them to control essential resources critical during droughts.
2. Environmental Impact: Their excessive water extraction led to land subsidence, ecological degradation, and the near-extinction of native species like the delta smelt.
3. Exploitation of Labor: Local farm workers suffered from poor living conditions, high costs of bottled water, and minimal wages due to the Resnicks' dominance.
4. Political Corruption: Through significant lobbying and donations, the Resnicks influenced water policies to favor their interests, undermining environmental protections.
5. Facade of Philanthropy: Despite engaging in exploitative practices, the Resnicks invested in philanthropic ventures to rehabilitate their public image, often appearing disingenuous.
6. Call for Regulation: The episode underscores the necessity for robust regulatory frameworks to prevent corporate monopolies and protect environmental and community welfare.

---

This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key elements and discussions from Episode 666, providing a clear understanding of the Resnicks' influence and the ensuing consequences without requiring prior listening to the podcast.

Transcript

[Dave]

We're going on tour. And this is.

[Gareth]

It's been a while.

[Dave]

March 2025 is when our tour is happening. First of all, we're going to Tempe, Arizona, maybe our favorite city of all time.

[Gareth]

It's the best.

[Dave]

That is on March 16th. And then we go to Albuquerque, New Mexico, maybe our favorite city ever, we've ever gone to. That's on March 17th. And then we go to Oklahoma City.

[Gareth]

Which is our fav. We often say that it's our number one.

[Dave]

Yeah, it's our number one. The best city I've ever been to. That's on March 18th. On March 19th, we're going to be in Tulsa, Oklahoma, our favorite city, without question. And then we head to Dallas, Texas, on March 20th.

[Gareth]

Our favorite city.

[Dave]

There's never been a better city than better.

[Gareth]

If you don't like it, you're a Dallas hole.

[Dave]

Thank you. And then we go to Houston, Texas, on March 21. City, which is by far the best city. And then we end our tour in Austin, Texas, on March 22 at the Cap City Comedy Club.

[Gareth]

It's the best in the entire world. Number one city in the world.

[Dave]

You can get [e-mail] tour.

[Gareth]

You're listening to the boy. Well, we'll get to that in a minute. Anyway, you'll hear the intro to this episode in a second. But we just wanted to quickly discuss what this episode is going to be. This episode is an episode that's already been put out by us. A little while ago, we put out this episode, and because of what has happened over the last week in California, we're putting this episode out one because we're having some logistical issues because of the fire. Dave doesn't have power consistently enough right now. And I think just in general, it's a little strange. So we're not gonna put out a new episode. What we are gonna do is put out an episode that we already did that we think is important now more than ever. You know, I think a lot of the stuff that happens on this show is Dave brings things to light that should be discussed, should have been discussed a while ago. And when we discuss them, it's sometimes maybe with an eye to the future. And this is one of those episodes where I think if you're really looking for maybe some context on some places to point the finger, this episode will do that. Truly appreciate everyone who's been reaching out and asking about us. But, you know, we're both okay. And, you know, there's obviously a lot of people who are suffering and, you know, it's just the way this all seems to be meant to play out at this moment. But this is also the. Some laughs in this episode, too. So, you know, we should be back with a. A new episode next week. But in lieu of that, please enjoy a replay of an episode titled the Resnick Water Monsters. There we go. And by the way, it's Gareth, not Gary. G A R E T h. All right.

[Dave]

December 24th, 1936. The year of our Lord J.D.

[Gareth]

Christmas Eve in 1936.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

That's when all the shit. That's when the best shit was happening.

[Gareth]

Sure.

[Dave]

Stuart Resnick was born in Middlebush, New Jersey. It's the middle of the bush.

[Gareth]

Sure.

[Dave]

His father owned a bar. He was a tough guy, a big drinker and a gambler. Stuart once came home and the family car was gone. Dad had lost it in a bet.

[Gareth]

Wow.

[Dave]

That's how much of a gambler he was.

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

So he lived on the edge. They never knew if they're gonna have a home or not.

[Gareth]

Or a car. Right. You could get lost in a game even.

[Dave]

Yeah, yeah. Quote, he was tough on the outside, but inside, he had these weaknesses. It's a nice thing to say about your pop.

[Gareth]

Yeah. I was thinking you would maybe have a little more upside as far as, like. But. But inside he had a good heart, but inside he was really weak. His will was weak.

[Dave]

He was terrible, awful on the inside. Stewart's friends were all from upper class families. He was the only poor one. Now, when Stuart was in his first year of college at Rutgers, the family got a call from an uncle in California. He'd gotten into building strip malls and said it was easy money.

[Gareth]

Oh, God.

[Dave]

How many times have you heard that? Get into the strip mall business. It's super easy there.

[Gareth]

I would relish living in a time where people were like, strip malls. I don't know if that's gonna work out. Instead of now where it's, like, all strip malls. Yeah.

[Dave]

The family headed out west. Stuart went to UCLA and joined a fraternity.

[Gareth]

Oh, so fun.

[Dave]

One of his frat brothers, his dad had a janitorial business, and Stuart and his friend bought a machine from him that scrubbed and waxed floors.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Soon they had a cleaning business.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Stuart then bought out his buddy because it was doing so well.

[Gareth]

It's like Goodwill cleaning.

[Dave]

He doesn't really care. It is Goodwill cleaning.

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

I don't like it when Aaron gets up.

[Gareth]

Look at him.

[Dave]

So the business takes off.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Pretty soon, he's got two trucks and crews Remember, he's still a student at UCLA.

[Gareth]

Sure.

[Dave]

When he graduated from UCLA in 1960, he was making 40k a year, which today would be about $320,000.

[Gareth]

Jesus. Okay.

[Dave]

That's a lot.

[Gareth]

It's a lot like Van Wilder.

[Dave]

When I got out of college, I was like, what kind of top ramen am I getting?

[Gareth]

And in college.

[Dave]

Yeah, when he noticed.

[Gareth]

What was your ramen flavor?

[Dave]

Oh, it's chicken shrimp. Really?

[Gareth]

Yeah. Which. Which people? I guess. Yeah.

[Dave]

It's upsetting.

[Gareth]

It's like a scarlet letter, I guess.

[Dave]

Yeah, it's bad. Yeah. Thanks for being such a supportive person. I'm not. Not on that. Not on shrimp. No.

[Gareth]

But it's just.

[Dave]

It's just sprinkles. It's just flavored shrimp in a packet.

[Gareth]

Just.

[Dave]

No, I don't want the flavor of shrimp. If I eat shrimp, I'm eating shrimp. I don't want the flavor of shrimp.

[Gareth]

That sounds like a way to tell someone to fuck off. Why don't you go eat shrimp? They'll just go eat some shrimp. Would you?

[Dave]

Hey, why don't you go eat some shrimp flavoring, buddy?

[Gareth]

You either come over here and get your teeth knocked out. Go eat shrimp.

[Dave]

So he noticed when he was cleaning buildings at night that there were no guards. So he decided to sell the cleaning business, and he started a security guard.

[Gareth]

Business and become the bad guy from Die Hard.

[Dave]

Become a robber? No, he started a security guard business. He sold his cleaning business for 2.5 million.

[Gareth]

And he's like, early 20s.

[Dave]

Yeah, he's just out of law school now.

[Gareth]

Wow. Okay, So a little later. Okay.

[Dave]

So Linda, now Linda Ray Harris, was born in 1942 and raised in Philadelphia.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Hey, Phil, how you doing?

[Gareth]

Nobody supports this.

[Dave]

He. Her dad was a film distributor, and when she was 15, her dad moved to LA to be a movie producer.

[Gareth]

So Linda and Stuart. Stuart and Linda. Okay. Right.

[Dave]

So her dad Produced the Blob, 1958 cult movie. One of the best.

[Gareth]

A great movie.

[Dave]

Best.

[Gareth]

My favorite movie about gelatin eating people. By far the best one.

[Dave]

It's that and the rest of all the gelatin movies.

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

Top.

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

It cost $240,000 to make and eventually grossed more than 100 times that. So he's rolling in it.

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

Linda was now a kid living in Beverly Hills. After high school, she wanted to go to art school, but her father refused to help with tuition. So instead she got a job working in a dress shop.

[Gareth]

The Blob man was like, I'm not gonna help you go to school.

[Dave]

Yeah, he was cool.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

If he had done that, none of this might have happened.

[Gareth]

Well, I don't know what's about to.

[Dave]

Happen, but she started making ads for the store and was very good at it.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

So she went into. When she went to working in advertising.

[Gareth]

Okay, great.

[Dave]

And while she's doing all this, up.

[Gareth]

Until she's creating a great sort of character type, someone who grew up in Beverly Hills with money and then went into advertising, I mean, if you meet this person, get next to him at a party, you're gonna want to hear about them.

[Dave]

So while she's doing all this, she got married and had kids. Right. So by the time she was 24, Linda had started her own advertising agency called Linda Limited and was divorced with three kids.

[Gareth]

Interesting.

[Dave]

Okay, so that's a lot of.

[Gareth]

It's a lot.

[Dave]

It's a different time.

[Gareth]

Yeah, a lot's going on early because.

[Dave]

Now if you're 24, you're like, man, when am I gonna move out?

[Gareth]

Yeah, now you're like, man, when am I gonna get that shrimp ramen? Love it. He's just a regular person who's like, man, that shrimpy ramen. Yum, yum, yum.

[Dave]

So at this point, Stuart Resnick was also divorced and had three kids.

[Gareth]

Wait a minute.

[Dave]

He needed some advertising.

[Gareth]

Here's a story of a man named Stewart.

[Dave]

Yep.

[Gareth]

Oh, boy.

[Dave]

Yeah. He needed some advertising work, and someone recommended Linda.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

They were married in 1973.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Stewart's guard company landed a big contract to handle security at lax.

[Gareth]

All right?

[Dave]

They guarded incoming international airplanes until the planes could be inspected by customs.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Three of the airport guards were arrested selling two pounds of heroin.

[Gareth]

That's illegal.

[Dave]

Back then it was okay. Stewart said it was a few bad apples in the company and they had already been fired.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Yeah, but. But the Federal Organized Crime and Racketeering Strike Force started investigating the company for, quote, possible infiltration of airport security by organized crime.

[Gareth]

Wow.

[Dave]

The LA Times quote, during the. During the five month investigation that led to the arrest, several of the suspects told undercover agents they had access to a large supply, as much as £100 at a time, of the Oriental heroin, which they said was being shipped into this country on commercial airlines.

[Gareth]

And that gives the undercover guys some information that shows that maybe heroin is being brought into the country illegally through them. Right? Okay.

[Dave]

A little bit.

[Gareth]

So it's a successful sting operation. Like, when you're going through that, you're like, hey, man, why'd you get such a huge boner just now? He's like, nothing. Just keep talking more to my chest.

[Dave]

Stewart sold the business, moved into the alarm business because there's no guards.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Then he sold the alarm company for 100 million. So now he's worth million. Yeah. He's kind of moving up in the world.

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

So they got into Agriculture in 1978, buying 2,500 acres of orange trees in Kern County, California.

[Gareth]

Hmm.

[Dave]

Little bit of a switch.

[Gareth]

Yeah. And I'm also. I'm a little. Now I'm starting to be suspect.

[Dave]

Mm.

[Gareth]

Because I don't like the numbers that are being thrown out as I do the math.

[Dave]

The state was experiencing a horrible drought, and they were able to get the land cheap. Stewart, quote, they were selling 2,500 acres of oranges and lemons and a packing house for a third of their appraised value. It was simply a place to park some money and have another opportunity. I think it paid 9 million. I think I paid 9 million. I think.

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

I mean, I can't remember 9 or 10. It's hard to keep track of the millions.

[Gareth]

Yeah. Like, it's like a backpack you bought on Craigslist. I think it was 13. I can't remember.

[Dave]

In 1978, they bought Telephora, a flower delivery company. Linda turned into a very lucrative business by selling the flowers in a glass vase or a teapot or with a teddy bear or some other shit. It was said she revolutionized the flower delivery service.

[Gareth]

God, so stupid.

[Dave]

Yeah. So she's like a teapot. Oh, my God. You're going to sell something else with flowers.

[Gareth]

Oh, my Lord.

[Dave]

This woman's a genius.

[Gareth]

I don't know how she thought of this.

[Dave]

Wait, a teddy bear with the flowers.

[Gareth]

Please let me lay down on this couch. No. Get a wet rag. Oh, my Lord. I'm going to pass out Flowers in a teapot. My two favorite things.

[Dave]

So now they have a parent company called Roll international.

[Gareth]

Mm.

[Dave]

On 11-4-17. Sorry. 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the US embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60American hostages.

[Gareth]

Mm.

[Dave]

President Carter imposed sanctions on Iran. Iran had long been known for producing the world's best pistachios. Very buttery. Very yummy. Everybody loves an Iranian pistachio.

[Gareth]

Is this seriously being highlighted for a reason or you're just. Okay, now, now, hold on. Yeah, they have the best pistachios.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Gareth]

Very buttery pistachios.

[Dave]

Yeah. I'm going to show you. This is the Resnicks. This is the couple.

[Gareth]

Oh, my God.

[Dave]

They're older. I couldn't find any young Pictures of them, but there they are. What's it look like now?

[Gareth]

Well, she's got that, you know, kind of maybe a little nip tuck going on, whereas he's like, I'm aging. She's like, I'm 20 still.

[Dave]

So now pistachios can't be sold in America, right? Because there's sanctions, okay? So the Resnicks saw opportunity. And with a horrendous drought that had occurred in 1976 and 1977 in California, oil companies like Mobil and Texaco were trying to dump their pistachio and almond orchards that they own for cheap.

[Gareth]

Okay?

[Dave]

These were huge 20,000 and 40,000 acre plots of land. So they bought more and more acreage through the 80s, Stuart and Linda did for rock bottom prices. Droughts always made land more affordable. In 1986, they bought Franklin Mint, a commemorative coin and medallion business, for 167.5 million. Linda turned into something much bigger, Diving into jewelry, dolls, model cars.

[Gareth]

Soon I put some of the coins in a teapot.

[Dave]

But she did something like, she bought at auction Jackie Kennedy's pearls that Joy's wore, which are apparently fake. And she bought them at an auction for 210,000. Like, everyone in the world made fun of her. There's actually a doers ad made about her that was like, did you just mocking her? Did you just buy fake pearls for $210,000?

[Gareth]

It's time for doers.

[Dave]

And then she made, like, fucking 50 million off of selling replicas. Like, so she. Yeah, so they made a shit.

[Gareth]

What up now, doers? Where are you now, doers? Huh? How about printing a retraction?

[Dave]

So pretty soon, annual sales of the Franklin Mint hit 1 billion.

[Gareth]

My God.

[Dave]

Yeah. And presidents kept pushing for tougher sanctions on Iran, and the residents kept buying farmland. By the end of the 80s, the residents had 100,000 acres. In 1987, they bought 18,000 acres from Prudential Life Insurance. Part of that was 180 acres of pomegranates.

[Gareth]

These enormous companies just owned huge plots, either for nuts or.

[Dave]

I don't know. Look, I know the oil companies had it because they wanted the oil that was under the ground. And then they're also like, why don't we also have a farm? Like, just use the land to make money.

[Gareth]

That's cute.

[Dave]

I don't know why an insurance company would have. Yeah, a farmland.

[Gareth]

All right, boys, that's 12:30, water and break. Get out there now, boys.

[Dave]

Get out there. Get them nuts off them trees and sell some life insurance, guys.

[Gareth]

Water the pomegranates.

[Dave]

So they had 180 acres of pomegranates. He was gonna rip them up, but one of his workers was like, just keep them and see what happens.

[Gareth]

Keep them. They're like a puzzle that you can eat.

[Dave]

So water in California is a big deal.

[Gareth]

Oh, no. Is this where we're headed?

[Dave]

Hmm.

[Gareth]

Oh, shit.

[Dave]

And the way it works is a fucking mess. The state's laws were designed to settle the frontier. So there's a first guy gets in, gets the water rights rule. So the first guy to get to wherever gets to own the water.

[Gareth]

So we have it as, like the Black Friday rules, essentially.

[Dave]

It's fucking ridiculous. And one guy, this guy named Miller, literally went and just fucking got all the water in the state at one point. Like, he just. He just got everything he owned, like, all the fucking water at one point. So it's called senior rights. Right? Those are senior rights.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Most senior water rights claims are the last to be restricted during droughts. So if you have senior water rights and there's a drought on, you still get water and other people don't.

[Gareth]

Oh. Oh, Dave.

[Dave]

So some farmers can still flood their fields while residents of towns like Oakyville and East Porterville have to truck in water. So East Porterville has no water whatsoever and they have to truck in all their water. That's the situation they're in, where farmers get to pump their water. Also, large urban areas would get water over many farmers. So like LA and San Francisco get water over a lot of the farmers.

[Gareth]

Right, okay.

[Dave]

But it's super complicated. In 1960, California created the State Water Water Project. The SWP takes water from rivers in the north and sends it to the dry south through equinox pipelines and tunnels. You've seen that when you drive up the five, there's a big, big aqueduct, but it was never completed.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

It's supposed to deliver 4.4.23. Sorry, 4.23 million acres of water a year, but has only been able to deliver 2.4 million acres of water because it's not fully done.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

So when droughts happen, the SWP rules say water should go to urban areas first and farms could get cut off and have to use aquife.

[Gareth]

Well, that seems smart.

[Dave]

So Kern county, where most of the resneck's land is, gets water, a lot of water from the SWP and then another organization. But in 1988, the Department of Water Resources bought an aquifer along the Kern river to store surplus water for drought years. So they bought this huge piece of land underneath is just this giant aquifer. And in that, they're going to store water. Right. Here it is.

[Gareth]

Okay. Well, it looks. It looks very fertile.

[Dave]

Yeah. So. So it's called the Kern Water Bank.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

In plus years, you just keep dumping water in there. When there's a drought, you can take it out.

[Gareth]

Right, Right.

[Dave]

Cost of state.

[Gareth]

It's a savings account.

[Dave]

Yeah, it's. It's a water savings account. That. Yeah, if that helps. Does that help?

[Gareth]

It helps, Aaron.

[Dave]

It costs the state 74 million.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Which would be like 140 million today. So after a couple more droughts, Stuart Resnick and others were unhappy they weren't getting all the water they wanted.

[Gareth]

Dave, I have a feeling I'm about to really not like Stuart and Linda.

[Dave]

Now, they had junior water rights, so that senior guys are ahead of them. Right. And they had to get around them. So a lawsuit was threatened against the DWR Department of Water Resources, who has the bank. And it's led by Stuart. It's a coalition of guys led by Stuart. And they said the state wasn't delivering the 4.23 million acres of water it was supposed to, which is true. It's not because it can't, because it's not fully built.

[Gareth]

Right.

[Dave]

So the DWR and the coalition had a secret meeting in Monterey, California, where Stuart Resnick proposed a solution.

[Gareth]

Oh, no.

[Dave]

California could give the water bank to the Westside Mutual Water Company, which is just a thing Stewart owns, and five water districts of all big Ag. Big Ag guys.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

The west side Mutual Water Company is owned by the Resnex. And all the water districts are controlled by agribusiness, including Paramount, which is the Resnex farm Company. So not only is he going to get not only one of the six, but then he also controls another one. So he's two of the six, really. And in return, the Resniks would give up their junior water rights, which is water that doesn't exist anyway.

[Gareth]

So they are sacrificing nothing to get a ton.

[Dave]

So they're threatening to sue because they're not getting water that they should not be getting because it's never been built into the system. But the system at the beginning was supposed to, like, legally supposed to send that much water down. So they're saying. So from 2 to leverage, from 0 to 2, there's actual water, right? From 2 to 4, there's no water. And that's where their water comes from. So they say they'll stop the lawsuit and give up the 2 to 4 water, which doesn't exist. If the state hands over the water.

[Gareth]

And who is negotiating on behalf of the state?

[Dave]

It's not great.

[Gareth]

Okay, so. Okay. Oh boy.

[Dave]

Now. So he also says the state can just pretend that the extra water exists.

[Gareth]

This feels foolhardy.

[Dave]

As far as pretending extra water existed. This became known as paper water.

[Gareth]

What is happening?

[Dave]

Yes, that's right.

[Gareth]

So they've created Origami goes in.

[Dave]

So they've created something called paper water, which is water that doesn't exist.

[Gareth]

Are you about to Enron water, you asshole?

[Dave]

But legally it does exist.

[Gareth]

No, it doesn't, you dick. What?

[Dave]

Legally it does. On paper, it's water.

[Gareth]

No, it. Cause you're supposed to get the four, you're supposed to get the gold. You want some paper gold, you're supposed.

[Dave]

To get the 4.2 million. So you have rights to water even though it's not real.

[Gareth]

You know, it's hard for you to throw out facts and then advocate for the other side. I'm like, feels like you have an evil twin. It's yourself.

[Dave]

Okay, so the state went for it good.

[Gareth]

I say we close this deal up, boys. It ain't gonna get worse.

[Dave]

And just gave up the water bank paid for by public money.

[Gareth]

What?

[Dave]

Created by the public. It is now privatized. It is just given away.

[Gareth]

What year was this?

[Dave]

This is 1994.

[Gareth]

Oh, God.

[Dave]

All happens behind closed doors.

[Gareth]

Who?

[Dave]

All deals are done behind closed doors. Governor is Wilson, Republican. Ever since that day in 1994, California has been operating as if water that does not exist is real.

[Gareth]

That's not good.

[Dave]

Why?

[Gareth]

Because we're low already.

[Dave]

To make a large real estate development in California, you legally have to prove you have a water source available. So if you want to build a bunch of houses, you got to prove that there's water to go to those people. Okay, so now developers could just buy paper water from farmers and start building houses.

[Gareth]

Oh, no.

[Dave]

On top of all this, the state agreed there would no longer be a requirement that the water be scaled back for farms during droughts.

[Gareth]

Oh God. Oh, God.

[Dave]

So it's literally the shittiest deal I've ever heard of by a state in the history of the paper shin. It's. It's the worst deal ever.

[Gareth]

Well, who closed it? I mean, nobody fucking knows who is in the room. Nobody knows who's in the room.

[Dave]

Nobody knows who was in there. They know Resnick was in there, some other guys, but we don't know who the fuck was in there. So suddenly, for some strange Reason Linda and Stuart Resnick became huge farmers. They nearly doubled their land holdings over the next three years. By 1996, the Resnicks owned more than 100,000 acres of pistachios and almonds. Sales were about 1.5 billion.

[Gareth]

Oh, my God.

[Dave]

And they had so much power and so much control over water that other huge farming families called on the state to intervene.

[Gareth]

Okay, right.

[Dave]

Yeah, sure. One was John. Should be Vitovich. Right. This guy John V. It's either Vysovich or Vitovich. We'll know right here when we pull it up, probably. All right, so that's one of the guys.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

So I think it's Vitovich. So Vitovich. So he's been. His father's a farmer. He's been buying up insane amounts of property, always near rivers or over large aquifers.

[Gareth]

Right. So he likes real water.

[Dave]

He likes real water. So he accused the Resnicks of using shell companies to monopolize control of the current water bank. Which is what was happening. Exactly what they did.

[Gareth]

Right.

[Dave]

A public resource had been privatized for the purpose.

[Gareth]

It's weird for a pistachio to have a shell company. Keep going. Can we get a symbol?

[Dave]

I don't think so.

[Gareth]

Is there a rim shot?

[Dave]

So a public resource has been privatized for the purpose of growing tens of thousands of acres of nuts. He charged.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

He's gonna take him to court.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

And then Vitovich suddenly.

[Gareth]

Oh, no.

[Dave]

Went to see Stuart.

[Gareth]

No.

[Dave]

And the lawsuit was dropped.

[Gareth]

No. I liked him right away. Damn it.

[Dave]

Now other companies.

[Gareth]

When I fall, I fall hard.

[Dave]

Now other companies took a look what the red. The. It kept autocorrecting into rednecks. So the Resnicks had done with the water bank.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

And decided that was a good way to make a buck. In 1998, a company named Enron bought a British water company for $2 billion.

[Gareth]

You are literally Enron in water. God damn it. Oh, dear God.

[Dave]

They renamed the company Azarics.

[Gareth]

I kind of missed when I knew nothing. It was kind of a simpler time.

[Dave]

Asrix bought the huge Madera Ranch in the San Joaquin Valley. The ranch was on top of a giant aquifer that could hold 480 billion acres of water.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

The Wall Street Journal quote, asric Corp. Is launching an exchange on the Internet for buying, selling, storing and transporting water in the west, hoping to make water a traded commodity, much like natural gas or electricity. Enron wanted people to invest in water. Paper, water.

[Gareth]

Oh, those. What they were just. They live. They worked in. Imagine town. Enron's whole business model is like yes, but have you heard of bullshit? It's way easier. Okay, so Enron is Enron ing water basically, right?

[Dave]

The idea was to sell aquifer storage space in this aquifer so farmers would send their when they had excess water like a year, there's a lot of rain, they could send their excess water to the storage, they pay to keep it there and then when they need it they could get the water back. At the same time.

[Gareth]

No, no, no.

[Dave]

The same time they're getting water from the state, that water they can sell and that a lot of that water is paper water. Right? So they can sell it to a guy who wants to build.

[Gareth]

You are like three card money in your mouth right now.

[Dave]

But no, so they can sell their fake water to a guy who wants to build a town or a development. It's fine. Why is this a problem?

[Gareth]

This is early and this is a train wreck.

[Dave]

So you know when you need to get your water in a drought year, you go back to Enron's water bank.

[Gareth]

And get your water. And Dave, believe it or not, that doesn't sound likely.

[Dave]

So it all sounds good, right? So from the guy, the opposite from all time, the guy running it, quote. So the way that water trading works is that you're not really actually trading the actual water molecule.

[Gareth]

So wait, buddy, pal.

[Dave]

So I have this amount of water and now let's swap it in such a way that I get access to water when I need it. But it's not the actual water that's going there, it's an allocation of water. So I'm owed water. So I'm going to sell that to you and then that's yours if it ever is a thing.

[Gareth]

I just want my water that I gave you.

[Dave]

Yeah, yeah. I don't know if we can do that, but let's. Why don't you trade it or sell it to somebody else?

[Gareth]

But it just sounds way worse.

[Dave]

Trust me, sell it. It's much better than trying to take it. We don't have it.

[Gareth]

What was at the end there?

[Dave]

Yep. I like doing business with you.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Hey, I gotta close up the bank.

[Gareth]

It's three my water.

[Dave]

The local farmers however, were onto it and did not fall for it. They organized and told Azarics to fuck off. And eventually Enron and Azarics had to give up and go home. Well, but they did try it in Texas, Florida and Argentina also and they failed in all three places they lost. Can we end 1.6 billion?

[Gareth]

Can we end the Episode now, because there's been a huge victory.

[Dave]

It's only gonna get better farmers. In 1998, the Resnex family doctor told them that the pomegranate was revered in folk medicine. Remember, that's 180 acres of.

[Gareth]

Yeah. Granites.

[Dave]

So they funded a study by an Israeli doctor at Technian University. Amazingly, quote, we found that the juice had more antioxidants than we'd ever found in red wine. They funded more studies, Linda, quote, the news was off the charts. The Resniks decided to make pomegranate juice.

[Gareth]

Oh, my God.

[Dave]

In 2001, they also planted seedless mandarins. But bees from nearby orchards were flying into the Resniks groves. And if you pollinate a flower of a mandarin, it gets seeds. If they're not pollinated.

[Gareth]

Let's play a little God.

[Dave]

Well, Stuart told his neighboring farmers to change which way the bees were flying or he'd sue them for trespassing.

[Gareth]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. He. Wait.

[Dave]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Gareth]

Are you a crazy man with all the money is telling other farmers to control their bees?

[Dave]

Have you ever seen a rich person.

[Gareth]

Welcome to bee leashes.

[Dave]

Have you ever seen a rich person who thinks that they can tell everything what to do? Well, this guy wants to control bees.

[Gareth]

I just. I think. And yes, there are a lot of entitled people out there, but normally people are able to see lines at the hive.

[Dave]

What are your insects doing, buddy? Get them out of here.

[Gareth]

All right, listen. All right, listen, guys. I'm going to make this short and sweet. Obviously, you've turned your bees against me and my seedless mandarins. Stop being assholes. Call off your bees. Otherwise, I'm sending my army of wasps.

[Dave]

Okay, I see one more bee, I'm going to fuck up you. I'm going to fuck up your hive.

[Gareth]

Oh, honey.

[Dave]

I'm going to these f. These fists made for bees.

[Gareth]

Hold on. I'm going to go grab one of these bees. All right, buddy? Who do you work for? Which farmer do you work for, little bee? Yeah. All right, well, maybe you don't want to talk now, but a punch to the bee gut. Yeah. Yeah, Be fine.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Gareth]

What happened to me? I don't know, okay?

[Dave]

I don't know. You have a lot of issues.

[Gareth]

So they've invented pomegranate juice because of the antioxidants that are now off the charts. And they're trying to control me?

[Dave]

Yes, they're trying to control his bees. The farmers whose land the bees came from.

[Gareth]

You mean the bee directors said they.

[Dave]

Couldn'T control the bees flight path.

[Gareth]

So they're giving that talking point. Interesting.

[Dave]

And then they threatened to sue Resnik back.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

So finally, Resnik just put netting up around his mandarins that bees could not penetrate.

[Gareth]

Sure. Make it a driving range.

[Dave]

That's how that went away for sure.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Now, his. Now, the Resnick's mandarins are called halos, if you've ever seen them. In every grocery store in California.

[Gareth]

I go to the farmers.

[Dave]

Okay. But there's two kinds of. Of.

[Gareth]

I know, small mandarins, right? Yeah.

[Dave]

They're halos and they're cuties.

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

And the two they used to have, it was them and somebody else had these orchards together and sold them all as cuties. And then the resinix split off because they can't work with anybody, right?

[Gareth]

No.

[Dave]

So Palm, the Palmer Juice, was launched in 2002.

[Gareth]

Oh, no. These are the Palm people.

[Dave]

At that time, only 4% of Americans had tasted a pomegranate.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Linda kicked in and marketed Palm as an anti, antioxidant, rich miracle food that might improve cardiovascular health, fight prostate cancer, erectile dysfunction, and even prevent Alzheimer's disease.

[Gareth]

So you're gonna have a strong body cock and you'll remember a lot of stuff.

[Dave]

Yeah, yeah. You fuck like a rhino. You're not getting sick. Good heart and. Yeah.

[Gareth]

And most of this is just sort of.

[Dave]

Well, it's from the studies that her own money paid for.

[Gareth]

Right. Paper studies.

[Dave]

So the residents had become Hollywood players and big in the Democratic Party. They live in Beverly Hills, Linda, quote, I have David Bowie and, you know, Rupert Murdoch and Summer Redstone. Who else?

[Gareth]

Well, sorry, can David Bowie get off the list, if possible?

[Dave]

I know everybody's on her list. Mike Milken, you know, just famous people.

[Gareth]

All, you know, Jay Simpson, Mel Gibson, Anna Nicole Smith, the A listers, the.

[Dave]

Normal people, all the heads of the Hollywood studio. So everyone she knows gets samples of Palm before it launches. And she just keeps sending them. And people are just. They're all drinking them. Shows them on TV shows like Desperate Housewives, Queer Eye.

[Gareth]

So Scientology, the beverage.

[Dave]

Yeah, basically. Queer Eye. There's swag bags, the Grammys, the Emmys, the Golden Globes. The Pomtini became a featured cocktail at the Oscars. So Pom takes off. It was healing food.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Right. Which is no different than what we've talked about before with the crazy healing cures.

[Gareth]

Oh, yeah. With, like, electric water or whatever.

[Dave]

Yeah. It's all the same. The national marketing campaign showed a palm bottle with a broken noose around its neck under the slogan, Cheat death Oh my God.

[Gareth]

Settle down.

[Dave]

I didn't get that.

[Gareth]

But here, by the way, and that is such a. Like, that is. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's what you see near where the salad dressings are.

[Dave]

Yeah. Yes. They fought to get it put in the healthy section because she said it's a living food.

[Gareth]

Oh boy. Yeah, it also. It's just like so easy to make people in Hollywood believe shit.

[Dave]

Yeah, it's the easiest thing in the world.

[Gareth]

Hey, I got a swag bag. Hey, this is Ja Rule. All I do is drink pom. All right, thanks, Ja. That's awesome.

[Dave]

In 2004, the Resnicks bought Fiji Water.

[Gareth]

The thickest plastic bottled water there is.

[Dave]

In 1995, the previous owner had gotten a 99 year lease over a 17 mile aquaf in Fiji with a tax free status from a wizard who gives that deal because he said I'll bring jobs. But he said the bottled water business is too risky and they went for it. God damn it. The tax break is supposed to end in 2008, so in four years after they bought it, right? So Fiji Water takes off. When the previous guy had, I think it was the third, third most selling one. But Fiji is still super poverty stricken island. The owner called Fiji Square bottles quote little ambassadors for the islands of Fiji.

[Gareth]

I'm full of bpa.

[Dave]

As soon as the Resonance Bot feature, they pushed the bottles into celebrities hands at every opportunity.

[Gareth]

Oh, these dumb morons. Hey, we're the cast of Friends. This is all we drink.

[Dave]

I mean, dude, they've got them in Al Gore's hand and like they've got them in hands. You're like, it shouldn't be in your hand. It was on the Sopranos 24, the View, Desperate Housewives. Soon Fiji was the number one selling bottled water in the U.S. we were.

[Gareth]

Just having fun though. We were just a bunch of kids who were excited to have bottles of water with us. You know, no longer living by the shackles of the bubbler, being able to walk around with some water. That's all we wanted. We just wanted a simple treat on a hot summer's day.

[Dave]

I know.

[Gareth]

Or something. When you're on a road, when you're sitting in traffic, you don't have time to pull over and drink from a goddamn river.

[Dave]

But imagine there's a God. If there is a God and he comes back, she. And she comes back and she goes, now tell me about this. And you go, okay, so. So we, we go to this island in the middle of the ocean. You build and we take Water.

[Gareth]

You already know everything. Why are you making us tell you?

[Dave]

And then we. And then we get. There's these guys that are called. You know, the Chinese guys are Chinese guys. They live over there and they make bottles for us and they're soup indifferent. And then we put the water in bottles and then we put on ships and we take it across the ocean and then we all drink it here.

[Gareth]

I don't think she'd be happy.

[Dave]

And then she goes, well, I gave you water where you are. I know, but this is in little square bottles.

[Gareth]

Yeah, but they're little babies. Let me handle this, Mark. They're little baby ambassadors. We like to look at. At each thick, thick plastic. And by the way, just to let you know, a lot of these bottles end up back in the ocean.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Gareth]

Where water.

[Dave]

And then they go.

[Gareth]

So ubiquitous.

[Dave]

That's right. It doesn't matter.

[Gareth]

And so the Fiji water goes home to the middle of the ocean on the island.

[Dave]

The people in Fiji don't have. They're like poor, so.

[Gareth]

Oh, yeah.

[Dave]

I don't know. Is that how you wanted them to be? Oh, no, they're on an awesome.

[Gareth]

Oh, you're all seeing. All knowing. You obviously know you made the Fijians poor.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Gareth]

And they are so happy to have their. Their resources stolen.

[Dave]

They love it.

[Gareth]

They're really into it.

[Dave]

They like when we take their stuff.

[Gareth]

Oh, yeah, no, we've got a bunch of them who will say that, you know.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Gareth]

But anywho's will be. We should get moving. We should go because we were talking about traffic earlier and it is awful time of. It's a Friday.

[Dave]

You should have done something about that.

[Gareth]

Yeah. And there's a seventh day. Maybe you should have or eighth or whatever. Okie dokie.

[Dave]

Anywho. Oh, you should meet with these guys at Nestle.

[Gareth]

Oh, absolutely. You'll love them. Nestle's great. They make chocolate kill people. It's unbelievable.

[Dave]

Yeah. So soon Fiji becomes the number one bottle water bottle selling company in the U.S. the slogan was, quote, we'll kill everything. And remember this, we saved you a trip to Fiji.

[Gareth]

Like the worst part. Thank you.

[Dave]

Like going to Fiji.

[Gareth]

Yeah, like going to Fiji is some sort of penance day without us. You'd have to go there.

[Dave]

It's nice though. It's an island.

[Gareth]

Shut up and drink your bottle.

[Dave]

Island paradise.

[Gareth]

Shut up.

[Dave]

Yep. Yep. The Resnicks also relentlessly attacked tap water, calling it, quote, not a real viable alternative.

[Gareth]

It's true that you can't drink it.

[Dave]

That it can contain 4,000 contaminants. Which Fiji's quote, living water did not.

[Gareth]

This is just. And these are repeated talking points. These are things that have now, you.

[Dave]

Know, I didn't even. I think I forgot to put this in here. But they eventually, yeah, they got fucked on that too. Like they, at one point they said our waters. Like they made fun of Cleveland and Cleveland water, they did tests and it's more pure than Fiji bottled water.

[Gareth]

Yeah. But it saved you a trip to Cleveland.

[Dave]

Linda wrote, quote, you can no longer trust public or private water supplies.

[Gareth]

Yeah, yeah. Trust this billionaire who called pomegranate juice the thing that'll cure your cancer.

[Dave]

Pistachios are also becoming bigger and bigger sellers. But the Resnicks knew if relations with Iran ever normalized, the country could sell its pistachios again, which are far sweeter.

[Gareth]

Sweet God. Sweet God.

[Dave]

The nuts are so much better. The Iranian nuts are so much better than America's that Israelis buy. Iranian pistachios shipped through Turkey and rebranded.

[Gareth]

Wow.

[Dave]

So the Resnicks started sending money to right wing think tanks and advocacy.

[Gareth]

Advocacy, advocacy, advocacy.

[Dave]

Advocacy groups that push for hardline approaches on Iran.

[Gareth]

This is just now becoming a cartoon like foreign policy based upon pistachio buttery ness capitalism.

[Dave]

This includes economic sanctions, sabotage and vilification. Between 1999 and 2004, the Resnick foundation funneled 1.125 million to the American Jewish Committee, one of the most active lobbyists pushing for Iran sanctions bill that was passed in 2009.

[Gareth]

Oh my God.

[Dave]

Other groups pushing for the sanctions were Halliburton, Exxon Mobil and Lockheed Martin.

[Gareth]

I gotta go. It's a list at like Satan's barbecue. Enra, Lockheed. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

[Dave]

The Resnicks also gave money to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank which calls for heavy sanctions and military strikes against Iran.

[Gareth]

What must it be like to have this much money?

[Dave]

I think you stop having any feeling.

[Gareth]

You completely lose conscience.

[Dave]

You have no feeling as a human being. Stewart is also a board member of the American Friends of idc, a non for profit foundation that is the fundraising arm of a think tank with close ties to the Israeli intelligence and military establishment. American Friends of IDC gave 10 million to the think tank in 2006. We do not know how much the Resnicks gave, but Stewart is a board member along with Vegas tycoon Sheldon Adelson.

[Gareth]

Oh my God, I think I need a pomegranate juice.

[Dave]

By the way, here's the Fuji plant. There it is making. That's where they make the Water. And it's.

[Gareth]

It's really beautiful. The facility, background.

[Dave]

Linda says others are jealous.

[Gareth]

Thanks for saving me a trip to there.

[Dave]

Yeah, sure. Linda says other people are jealous of their pistachio success. Well, people quote, we've done more for the pistachio than anyone ever since it was planted in the Garden of Eden.

[Gareth]

Oh, sorry, can we just murder that sentence for an hour?

[Dave]

Can I finish the sentence?

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

Oh, no, do the second one. My husband should be canonized for all the work he's done.

[Gareth]

Oh, my God.

[Dave]

By the way, they've been canonizing people for nut quality for a long time.

[Gareth]

Oh, my God. Just. You're deep in the pistachio game when you're talking like this. You know, I'm the Martin Luther King of pistachios. So.

[Dave]

Just so people understand what sanctions do. Sanctions kill people. Sanctions kill children and people who need medicine. They kill people. That's what sanctions do. They really hurt the poor, and they kill the poor in other countries. So when they're trying to make money off their pistachios, they're killing people.

[Gareth]

They're begging for sanctions based on their nuts.

[Dave]

Yeah, nuts. In 2006, the Fiji government was overthrown in a military coup.

[Gareth]

Okay?

[Dave]

The Resniks just kept doing business in the country, saying they were helping the people by giving them jobs. Environmental activists targeted Fiji Water for bottling water on a Pacific island with oil made from bottles in China and talking shit about tap water. Linda responded with a new Fiji slogan, quote, every drop is green.

[Gareth]

Shouldn't that be what you label tap water?

[Dave]

She started. She started an ad campaign called Fiji Green that urged people to drink imported water to fight climate change.

[Gareth]

Oh, my. Good day. You know, sometimes you just gotta go so far off the spectrum to hit a home run. You know what I mean? It's almost like you took a swing, missed the ball, but then when the bat crossed behind you, you accidentally bunted. You know, like, you've just got to, like, you know. Oh, yeah? Well, we're ruining the world. Well, how about this? Buy Fiji water to save the world, bitch. How about that? Oh, God.

[Dave]

It's really. The Fiji Green website claims a 120% carbon offset and says that buying a large bottle of Fiji Water creates the same carbon reduction as walking five blocks instead of driving.

[Gareth]

What? What happened? What just happened? Who is the scientist? Hello, I'm Dr. Hostage. Jesus. So if you don't drink your Fiji today, walk five blocks. Okay?

[Dave]

The company insists that the water bottles travel on ships that would be making the trip anyway, so that doesn't count.

[Gareth]

Empty ships just making the trip. Well, what do you say we turn around and do it again with nothing on board, huh? Time's sake.

[Dave]

They Wait. Did I mention the Resnicks own Neptune Pacific Line, a shipping company? No, I didn't. Oh, they also own that. So maybe they're right. Maybe the ships are going that way anyway.

[Gareth]

They're not likable.

[Dave]

In 2008, the way they were factoring it all was. They were like. It was like, there's this. There's this way that certain companies do. We're good for climate change, we're good for carbon emissions. Is they, like, do it like it's like a decade for decades ahead formula. So it's like.

[Gareth]

So they're able to, if you look.

[Dave]

At this, over nine decades. We're actually pretty good. So they use this math that's just like, fucking nonsense.

[Gareth]

In future decades.

[Dave]

Yeah, yeah. Future decades. Like, so they're like, so nine decades down the road, it all works out.

[Gareth]

It's the Enron genie refusing to go back in the bottle again.

[Dave]

In 2008, the tax break Fiji had given had given. The water company was set to expire. The government tried to impose a tax. Fiji Water called it, quote, draconian and shut down the plant. The government gave in. Fiji Water never called the military junta controlling the island draconian, just the attempt to get taxes. Wow. The military declared martial law in 2009.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

The dollop is brought to you by Public Rec. Public Rec is a clothing company, and they make the most comfortable pants. I got a pair of what are known as day makers. So comfortable, breathable, stretchy. They just feel so. They feel like you could sleep in them. That's how good these pants feel. You just come home, take out your wallet, your keys, just slip into bed, and they got a bunch of different types of pants. And then they also have the full whatever you need for the top. They got sweatshirts, they got hoodies. They got just outerwear and polos and Henley's. They got the whole. The whole thing works. Works. And they're all super comfortable. Gareth and I also both have hoodies, which we are super into. So for a limited time, our listeners can get 20 off your entire order with code [e-mail] that's 20 off. When you use promo code [e-mail] they got all kinds of sizes. There's not just small, medium, and large. They got extra large. Whatever length you need, whatever width you need, they got it for you. And did I mention comfort? So make your New Year's resolution a comfortable one. No more pants that pinch, tug, or annoy. For a limited time, you can get 20 off at public rec by using code Dollop at checkout. Just head to publicwrec.com use code DOLLOP and you're all set. Oh, and when they ask how you found them, be sure to mention the dollop. It really helps us out. Find your perfect fit and never compromise on comfort again. Public wreck, where comfort rules. In California, the Resnick Water bank ownership was paying off in spades. When drought struck in 2007, the Resnick's 48% stake in the Kern Water bank became even more valuable. The AP reported that the Resnick share of the water bank amounted to 246 billion gallons, enough to supply all the residents of San Francisco for 16 years.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

They were able to expand and water all of their orchards. Now each nut.

[Gareth]

Oh, yeah.

[Dave]

Takes a gallon of water. Yeah, each nut. And they're insanely thirsty.

[Gareth]

You know, that needs to be in this day and age. Instead of calorie counts, that's what needs to be listed next to the food items.

[Dave]

How much water.

[Gareth]

How much water does it take to produce this stuff?

[Dave]

So they also sold water. So the Resnicks are selling water.

[Gareth]

Why do they need.

[Dave]

What are they in the water bank?

[Gareth]

Dime bags. When they got ounces moving, they're selling.

[Dave]

Water to the state of California.

[Gareth]

That is the. This just further proves how bad this deal is. I say we take it. Why did you say yes to this? Look, all right, they're pretty shrewd. I say we just let's move on this deal. I don't know how much better it's going to get.

[Dave]

So this is water the state had owned, Dave, and just gave way to the people now charging them for the water.

[Gareth]

They're giving us a great deal. Let's move this.

[Dave]

From 2000 to 2007, the state of California paid the ResNex $30.6 million for water. And the water was used to protect native fish, the delta smelt in the fragile Sacramento San Joaquin Delta. So they're saving a fish that's a key animal in the food chain. Super key animal in the food chain. And so they're selling water. But again, I think this is allotted water because they can't take water from the water bank. Move it up. I think it's just an allotment of water. So they're not taking the water that's going down the river. And they're like yeah, you can have that. We'll just sell it to you.

[Gareth]

We just are not allowed to be shocked when we live in Mad Max.

[Dave]

In 2010, the Fiji government said it was going to increase taxes again. Raising the tax on bottled water about 8 cents in US money.

[Gareth]

You'll have to walk three more blocks.

[Dave]

Yeah. The Fiji bottle taxes were only bringing in $500,000 a year. And this would raise it to 22 million.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

The Resniks, making hundreds of millions a year from Fiji Water, not including all. All their other businesses, weren't about to pony up. How could they? Their net worth was $1.3 billion. How could they give up 22 million a year?

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

The Resnicks immediately shut down the Fiji Water plant and laid off the 400 Fijian employees. Armed guards took over the plant. The Fiji Water president said this was, quote, a clear and unmistakable message to businesses operating in Fiji or looking to invest there. The country is increasingly unstable and is becoming a very risky place in which to invest.

[Gareth]

How about existence? Quality of existence.

[Dave]

To. To do. To do that to human beings. And granted, it's a military junta and whatnot, but that island needs money and you're fucking taking their water. And you have $1.3 billion.

[Gareth]

And it's the story we've heard a number of times on this. Where it is. It's just this level of theft.

[Dave]

And now they're calling out to the rest of the world that it's a shitty place to invest. Yes. Hurting further business ventures because that's all that matters. So challenging the resonance.

[Gareth]

I'm gonna punch you.

[Dave]

Okay, okay. Challenging the Resnex is not a thing that usually goes well.

[Gareth]

Well, I'm glad we're doing.

[Dave]

Allegedly, there was a pistachio commission that, like, very serious. Well, you know, like the milk commission and stuff where they do.

[Gareth]

We're with the PC. Excuse me, ma'am. Can we just borrow a moment at your time? We're with the PC. The Pistachio Coalition. Look, we're here to. When was the last time you saw your husband? We're with the Pistachio Coalition. Your husband might have died.

[Dave]

Shouldn't you be. Shouldn't you be doing pistachio work?

[Gareth]

It's a log store. You know what?

[Dave]

We've broadened our reach.

[Gareth]

We're also doing murder investigate. Anyway, look, the point. Ma'am, take a seat. Your husband has been murdered. Actually, this is the first time I've had to let someone down from this.

[Dave]

You might have a crack. One of these.

[Gareth]

Oh, go for it. This is Tom. He's kind of a hothead, but he's also a puppy dog.

[Dave]

So there's a pistachio commission. They basically handle that.

[Gareth]

Hey, with the PC, how you guys doing? Open up PC with a pistachio coalition. What kind of nuts you got in your nut drawer?

[Dave]

So they handle advertising, right. It's all the farmers get together and they decide kind of at it. And so when the. When the Resnicks got control of 65% of pistachios, they killed the commission. So they would just handle the marketing themselves. Sure.

[Gareth]

This is how monopolies get to have fun.

[Dave]

That's right. So one guy on the commission said, quote, stuart wants to be a benevolent dictator. If he thinks you're defying him.

[Gareth]

Wants to be?

[Dave]

Yeah. If he thinks you're defying him, he'll start with, nobody realizes the good I've done for agriculture. And then he moves on to do you know who I am? Do you know what I am? I'm a billionaire.

[Gareth]

That's cool. That's super cool to hear.

[Dave]

It doesn't matter who the billionaire is. If a billionaire ever says, I'm a billionaire, legally, you can kick them in the nuts as hard as you want.

[Gareth]

Right in the pistachios.

[Dave]

Right in the pistachios.

[Gareth]

I like how you're sighing.

[Dave]

I'm gonna continue the quote. He's got an awful temper. He's trying to control through Kabbalah.

[Gareth]

Dave. I mean, we're just. We're checking a lot of boxes here. I mean, I don't know when the douche of the year is, but.

[Dave]

So the PR from this Fuji shutdown is not good.

[Gareth]

Right.

[Dave]

And the quotes that they're saying, people read right through. So there's a backlash. So the day after shutting down the plant, the Resnicks relent and accept the tax increase. Cause it's $22 million and they make one point.

[Gareth]

Dave, give him some. That's so cool.

[Dave]

None of the so called help the Resnicks give Fiji has stopped outbreaks of typhoid on the islands. Typhoid fever is endemic there. Incidents have been increasing over the last decade.

[Gareth]

What does that do to the investment prospects?

[Dave]

Recent recent research identified the transmissions. The transmission of typhoid is predominantly through the consumption of contaminated surface water and unwashed produce. If only the people of Fiji had a source of water. So they're taking their aquifer water and the Fijians are drinking, I assume, out of reservoirs that are giving them typhoid.

[Gareth]

How many blocks are they walking?

[Dave]

Five. So they're saving.

[Gareth]

They got to pick it up.

[Dave]

Climate change.

[Gareth]

They got to pick it up.

[Dave]

I don't think that's how you cure typhoid.

[Gareth]

No. You got to walk 10 bucks and jump.

[Dave]

Okay. Yeah, that's fair.

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

Yeah. What if you're on this really small island, though?

[Gareth]

There's not. They should just open their own typhoid kind of water. I mean, that's what. That's what the Resnicks did.

[Dave]

Okay.

[Gareth]

Sorry for liking these people. I'm sorry.

[Dave]

No, it's totally smitten.

[Gareth]

I know. A winner.

[Dave]

That same year, the Federal Trade Commission ruled that palms ads of health cures were not true.

[Gareth]

Weird.

[Dave]

The FTC said palm had overhyped the juice's ability to prevent heart disease, prostate cancer and erectile dysfunction.

[Gareth]

Yeah, my dick still won't get hard. You liars.

[Dave]

I drank so much palm and I can't fuck.

[Gareth]

Well, that's. That's the first Aaron laugh I've been slinging the whole hour.

[Dave]

Linda. Quote Linda. I think it was unfair, and I think it's a tragedy if the fresh fruits and vegetables that are really the medicine chest of the 21st century have to adhere to the same rules as a drug that could possibly harm you. The Resnicks live in a house.

[Gareth]

Oh, I don't want to see it because I'm going to go burn it.

[Dave]

In Beverly Hills. That's not a house that is valued at $25 million. Earth Island. Earth Island Journal. Quote, the Beverly Hills home looks more like an embassy than a house.

[Gareth]

Seriously.

[Dave]

They entertain the rich and famous there. They've expanded the house by buying up and tearing down three adjacent properties. An author who wrote a book about over the top houses called it, quote, exaggerated, extravagant, crude, ridiculous, and a bit indecent. There is a seven foot marble statue of Napoleon in their drawing room.

[Gareth]

Sorry. They made Napoleon seven feet.

[Dave]

A marble statue says a lot. They had to reinforce the floor to put the statue in.

[Gareth]

You know, we're taking water from Waterloo. It's an interesting project we have coming up in the spring.

[Dave]

Gold is everywhere. Legged gold furniture, paintings and gold frames. Gold leaf carpet, ceilings with gold leaf moldings and gold framed drapes.

[Gareth]

Hey, new money, am I right?

[Dave]

New money. I mean, it's just fucking powerful.

[Gareth]

Oh, God.

[Dave]

Could you imagine? What the fuck? Why would you live in that?

[Gareth]

Yeah, it's just like. Must look at the fucking table. Yeah. Living in a museum, it's just a gold ringed table.

[Dave]

It's like a crown table.

[Gareth]

It really is the height of when you're obsessed with possessions, it no longer matters what your livability or quality is. It's. What do strangers think?

[Dave]

Well, when you think about the French Revolution, you in your head, picture these rich people eating grapes and dancing around like there's no difference between this and the Fiji.

[Gareth]

Well, and the disparity is now it's rising to the surface more and more. So we will, you know, like we just need to. If I were an investor right now, I'd invest in pikes Huge for heads in the future.

[Dave]

But the resnecks are about to become givers now. They're philanthropists. They've gone given to. They give to museums and, and.

[Gareth]

Hey, sir, we took all your water. Here's a statue.

[Dave]

They did like some neuro wing in the UCLA or something for neurological disorders.

[Gareth]

Okay.

[Dave]

Linda's story of what happened in 2010 that really made them change and help people is that they were at a dinner party with a Harvard professor, by the way.

[Gareth]

I mean, talk about a relatable premise.

[Dave]

Who was an ethicist?

[Gareth]

Oh my God, some of the sentences you've said read like mad libs.

[Dave]

Well, having dinner with an ethicist is such a fucking rich person thing to do. Hey, let's have an ethicist over and he'll see. We'll just talk and see how we're doing.

[Gareth]

I wouldn't use that fork.

[Dave]

Why?

[Gareth]

There's a downside you're not thinking of. Oh my God, what a nightmare. That much pepper. He's really sarcastic and rude.

[Dave]

Are you ready for this?

[Gareth]

No.

[Dave]

He asked the guests if they would be happy living in a town that was perfect in every possible way except for one terrible secret. Everyone in the town knew that somewhere in that village in a dank basement, there was a small 6 year old child who was being tortured. And you couldn't say anything about the torture because if you did, you had to leave the town.

[Gareth]

Sorry, Todd. I'll have the prime rib. I don't know what I want to put a pin in this. I can't imagine what they. This is like that movie premise where it's like if you hit a button, someone dies, but you don't know. So essentially, are you okay knowing the truth in order for your life to be perfect?

[Dave]

That's what he's saying. He's basically saying you're ignoring the truth. Right by them getting. He's sitting with a bunch of rich people saying, by you guys getting all this, you're fucking over people.

[Gareth]

Surely charging $65,000 for this dinner, Linda.

[Dave]

Quote, and it changed my Life that very day. They would do good from then on. Now I'm sure this sudden philanthropy was because of a Harvard professor and had nothing to do with a story written by reporter John Gibler in the Earth Island Journal just months before. It was about the farm workers in the town of Lost Hills, Kern County. The farm workers of the Resnicks farm. Quote, the farm workers of Lost Hills live in mobile homes and cannot drink the water from their taps. The crops, they tend drink better and cheaper water than they do. Lost hills is a 21st century company town. There is no bank, no pharmacy, no local government. The nearest place to deposit a check or go to a supermarket is Wasco, 20 miles away. Nearly everyone labors in the field for a minimum wage. Nearly everyone in the town works for the Resnicks. The Los Angeles Business Journal estimates the resnik's worth at $1.79 billion. One guy who worked 58 hours a week at $8 an hour was asked how many of the field workers were undocumented. If not 100%, then the majority. The workers all complained about low wages. One had been fired after. After injuring his knee on the job. One woman said, quote, these are hunger wages. The reporter called the Roll International office to ask for an interview. The receptionist said the company didn't give information to the public. The reporter asked who he should address his research questions to, quote, I suggest you don't research us. And she hung up. The workers in Los Hills have no clean water source. Have to buy bottled water, which costs them $50 to $100 a month. They have to buy bottled water for $50 to $100 a month while working for the number one water bottlers in the fucking world.

[Gareth]

They really did bring Fiji here, though. Jesus.

[Dave]

And the Resniks had.

[Gareth]

I mean, talk about gritting teeth when you're buying bottles of water.

[Dave]

The Resniks also had control of 755,000 acre feet of water in the Kern Water bank at that time.

[Gareth]

Oh my God. I mean, they need an on site ethicist. It needs to be like a gardener. You need a team of ethicists. Linda, can we talk to you real quick? That's an awful thing you're doing. Oh, it is.

[Dave]

Have you heard of a soul replacement?

[Gareth]

No. How much? I'll throw money at this.

[Dave]

So the resnicks began spending 50 to 80 million a year on philanthropy for poor people. And they started, strangely enough, with their own workers in Lost Hills.

[Gareth]

That's not charity. That's not. That's not charity. What?

[Dave]

God, what are you talking about?

[Gareth]

We've decided to donate to our workers. A brave, brave decision has been reached here, Stewart.

[Dave]

Quote, look, there's poverty and sadness all over the planet. But I felt that if I was really going to do work, I should start to do work in the place where our employees work and live. That would be most meaningful, Stuart.

[Gareth]

Brave, brave Stuart.

[Dave]

So, Lost Hills. Oh, do I not have a picture?

[Gareth]

There it is. Lost picture. Oh, there it is. Oh, wow. Yeah, that looks. That looks shitty.

[Dave]

The workers in the valley got college scholarships and tutors. A new school being built. Linda is, of course, designing the curriculum.

[Gareth]

Oh, good. Okay. So you're taking Palm 101. It's all about pomegranates.

[Dave]

And then we're doing a thing about how great Fiji water is.

[Gareth]

Okay. And then why immigrants are just rude.

[Dave]

Also, why it's good to lower the minimum wage.

[Gareth]

Paper water. Better than real water.

[Dave]

You can drink it.

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

There's a free wellness center and free fruits and veggies put out for the workers. Linda decided to get rid of the nacho chips, French fries, and soft drinks. The workers weren't happy about it. So the residents started to begin to sell wellness to their 4300 employees.

[Gareth]

This is just. I mean, this is not. This is Jonestown. You know, drink the Kool Aid the second that you're offering your own. Like, that's the problem with the term wellness formula. Like, I have a wellness formula. You know, I'm making it a vat.

[Dave]

They. So they did stuff like, they built a. They built a park. They get bonuses. The workers get.

[Gareth]

I should not have watched. Sorry to bother your. That movie is now like, well, what are you talking about? We made wonderful park.

[Dave]

They get bonuses for losing weight. 1,150 workers have earned bonuses up to $500 for losing a collective 14,000 pounds between all of them over two years.

[Gareth]

You know where that's not happening is Venezuela will be soon.

[Dave]

During paid breaks, music starts blaring and they do 15 minutes of Zumba where they are.

[Gareth]

I think Teletubby has less weird laws. Teletubby Land, quote.

[Dave]

A few dozen seasonal employees wearing orange reflective vests and hairnets sat around folding tables, evaluating samples from incoming truckloads of pistachios. Suddenly, a boombox started blaring Merengue, and everyone stood up and danced. It was the daily Zumba break at the cafeteria. Spanish rice isn't rice, but cauliflower. That looks like rice. Pizza dough is cauliflower, too. She's making them eat what she eats. Dave she's making them do the Zumba, which you know she does.

[Gareth]

Dave. It's honestly taking on a dark turn.

[Dave]

After work, a 10 hour workday, they are pushed to work out in the fitness center for an hour. And they do it. There are trainer watches. The workers want the cash bonuses from the company's Get Fit program.

[Gareth]

Is it living in a timeshare? It's like a timeshare meeting.

[Dave]

It's okay. So it's not. Is working out good for them? Yes, sure. Is eating healthy good for them? Yes, sure. But also, if you're making minimum wage, fuck it. One of the only joys you have is eating the food you like. Not cauliflower fucking rice like you're already fucking. Let them have their little moments of fucking joy.

[Gareth]

But it's also easy to do that. It's also easy to insist on 15 minute Zumba breaks when your life is breaks.

[Dave]

Yeah. Oh, totally.

[Gareth]

And so you're just like, hey, everybody do Zumba.

[Dave]

They have no idea what these people lives are. Yeah. So most of these people came from northern Mexico where their farm towns were taken over by cartels. A lot of people were slaughtered in those towns and they fled. To get to America, they have to pay coyotes to cross the border. The price now is $12,000 ahead, which the families they get a cousin over, then they pay off together over years. So out of their meager wages, they're saving up money to pay off the coyotes so they can never get ahead. So they will take the hundred dollars that they get for working out for a year because they have to.

[Gareth]

Oh, you're paid to work out.

[Dave]

Well, that's.

[Gareth]

That's the incentive. Right?

[Dave]

She pays them. And they need money so badly because their lives have been so. So.

[Gareth]

By the way, cauliflower is very versatile. So.

[Dave]

So it means. Yeah, so it means they do. If they do Zumba in the middle of a fucking pistachio field, they'll do it. Which has got to be the most humiliating thing I can fucking think of. Like, I just cannot imagine.

[Gareth]

Well, you are just. I mean, you are in like a delusional paradise.

[Dave]

Yeah. But they still live in train box cars that were turned into housing. And their water comes out of a tap that is. And it is yellow and foul smelling. They do not drink it.

[Gareth]

That is sort of the beauty of the capitalists dream is that they spent so long telling you that your tap water was dog shit long enough to make you believe it. So they turned your water into dog shit.

[Dave]

Well, the water there is a fucking nightmare. An 11 year old girl quote. It comes out like pee. They spend $50 a month or more on bottled water. Still, I wish there was a way around. I wish there was something that the resonance could do. Anyway, in 2014, Steve, someone should show.

[Gareth]

Them a documentary about the Resnicks, right? Yeah.

[Dave]

In 2014, Stephen Colbert did a Super bowl ad for the Resnicks. Pistachios. Remember, his head comes open and there's a pistachio inside. Pistachio. Sales more than doubled in three months. Sales increased the following year to reach 114 million in more than. Sorry. In 2015, the Resnicks rebranded all their holdings from Roll International to the wonderful company to highlight their focus on healthy products and philanthropy. Linda, quote, our company has always believed that success means doing well by doing good.

[Gareth]

No, it hasn't.

[Dave]

No, no. She said there's. She has a name. They named it. So there's the school. They're making Prep Academy.

[Gareth]

Oh, my God.

[Dave]

What? Jesus Christ. They're people. They're great people.

[Gareth]

Oh, look at that. You know, they should be sentenced to drowning.

[Dave]

2015, it was revealed that for 20 years the Resniks and other farmers had been watering their orchards with treated frack wadding wastewater.

[Gareth]

Ah, that's right. Right.

[Dave]

Fracking wastewater. Wastewater is a byproduct of fracking. It is being treated and sold to farmers who use it to water their crops, which are then sold in grocery stores to human beings. As the brutal drought wore on, farmers used more and more oil wastewater. California officials praised using oil wastewater to grow vegetables. But some think it's not exactly safe.

[Gareth]

And these people who are flagging it, I don't know, basing this upon the idea they're naive.

[Dave]

I don't like oil and white food. They don't believe wastewater hydrocarbons and strawberries, you know, they're just fucking dumb.

[Gareth]

By the way, it's gonna be really interesting. Like, you know, the next 30 years. Shall we give us. Are gonna be really fascinating because there's gonna be a lot of fun mutations going on. Like, you know, X Men's gonna watch like a documentary in 20 years just while people have been like living on fracked food, right?

[Dave]

And then people say, well, the EPA is being fucked by Trump. But it's already fucked. Oh yeah, it's already a fucking disaster, guys. No one's doing shit about anything. I mean, sure, they do a lot of stuff, but it's so fucking bad.

[Gareth]

Absolutely. I mean, look at the amount of.

[Dave]

Look at Flint.

[Gareth]

The amount of pollution that is allowed to just be. And of course it's getting worse, but it has. It's like everything else. It's kind of like if you're a president, you're. What you're really doing is biding your time. What is going to be part of your problem and what is going to be part of this next guy's problem? Or like a guy 30 years down the line. And we, unfortunately are at the breaking point of this problem with the worst person possible. But it has been created. The corrosive. The corrosive nature of all of this goes back ages. Yeah. A decades. Yeah.

[Dave]

So, for instance, benzene turned up in the wastewater, but the state has set no standard for benzene. Irrigation water. After complaints, the water board started requiring the water.

[Gareth]

The water board.

[Dave]

The water board say yes. Request requiring the water be tested for toxins and toxins and appointed a committee to determine if chemicals in the water, quote, pose a threat to public health at the concentrations detected.

[Gareth]

Yeah, let's see now.

[Dave]

Let's do that. 20 years after we started doing it.

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

That's when we should do that for sure.

[Gareth]

Yeah. No, find out. It's time.

[Dave]

California safety consultants are concerned, quote, current water district requirements for testing such waters before they are used for irrigation are not sufficient. No one knows what chemicals fracking companies use, so they don't know what to test for. Because fracking companies, I don't think anywhere does any government force any fracking company to disclose the chemicals they use because of copyright law.

[Gareth]

Why would they? Why would they. Why would you want to know that? Why would you want to know what you're blasting into earth?

[Dave]

Some of the crops being grown with fracking water are subview raisins. That's probably wrong, but Sutter Home wines and wonderful citrus halos.

[Gareth]

Hmm.

[Dave]

Journalist Yasha Levin, he went down there and here's the pools.

[Gareth]

Oh, God.

[Dave]

Here's his quote. To really appreciate the toxicity of this place, all you have to do is stand by the mixing ponds where the oil waste is magically turned into clean.

[Gareth]

That is so much worse than I.

[Dave]

Would have imagined into clean irrigation water. A whiff of the raw petroleum and chems makes your head scratch.

[Gareth]

That's the water that is being used for the like.

[Dave]

I mean, essentially, it's like huffing glue, he said. So they put it in different pools and they move it from pool to pool, and that's supposed to clean up the water. So it's different pools where they're just moving the water through, but they're putting.

[Gareth]

The fracking water through at least what they're saying is cool to pretty tiny.

[Dave]

See the dark one and then the next one and then the next one. So that's how they're cleaning it.

[Gareth]

They all look pretty dark.

[Dave]

And then crude oil and water.

[Gareth]

Oh God. What? Who asked to draw that on something? You're like, no, that makes no sense. Wow.

[Dave]

So they're using this water to all their, all the farmers because there's a drought and at the same time the government was cracking down on fracking companies about how to get rid of wastewater. So it all fragriculture all worked out.

[Gareth]

But, but the, that is part of the problem is that like when you have, when you do squeeze farmers to this extent, it's like what Monsanto does.

[Dave]

It's like at some point these guys aren't being squeezed.

[Gareth]

No, no, the farmer, like local farmer, like when local farmers have to like make decisions, they're going to make compromise decisions to survive.

[Dave]

But I don't know how, I don't know. I mean the number of local farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and the middle is probably very small. I mean this is. Agribusiness has destroyed everybody. The redneck's thirst for water shows no sign of ending. They have used front groups and political pressure to try to get even more water from Northern California's Delta.

[Gareth]

Goddamn.

[Dave]

The biggest thing holding it all up is a fish called the delta smelt.

[Gareth]

The smelt are considered, whoever smelt it, Delta.

[Dave]

That's right. The smelt are considered an indicator species used to gauge the overall health of the Delta's aquatic flame.

[Gareth]

I'm going to get out of here. And when you. Because I'm sure this is going to be a pretty light fact, so I'm going to actually get out of here. Before you say this one, I'm just going to walk out with a pretty optimistic view.

[Dave]

As the smelt goes, so go the other fish species in the delta. Lawsuits over the livelihood of the Delta smelt have kept more water from being pumped out of the Delta. So the smelt is basically saving the delta, but it's also dwindling every year. I learned about the Delta smelt when I was in college in the fucking early 90s. The Delta smelt, like when the Delta smelt goes down, so do the salmon. And if the salmon go down, they don't just go down in San Francisco. It affects the whole fucking West Coast. Like the Delta smelt is a big fucking deal. So a group called the Coalition of A Coalition for Sustainable Delta started filing lawsuits to assign blame for the estuary's decline it blamed everything from farming, housing development, dredging, power plants, sport fishing and pollution. But not. But not big ag farming in the valley, farming up north near the Delta.

[Gareth]

Weird.

[Dave]

The coalition originally listed a Paramount Farms fax number, and three of the four officers on its early tax documents were Resnick employees.

[Gareth]

It's so simple. I mean, you just. At some point, you're just too cocky.

[Dave]

Yeah, but they can get away with it. They are getting.

[Gareth]

Yeah, that's what I mean.

[Dave]

No one's going to stop it. What do you care?

[Gareth]

Why would. Yeah, you may as well let Linda to do everything.

[Dave]

After judges ruled in favor of the smelt, the Resnicks started reaching out to politicians whom they had given tons of money to over the years. 734,000 to Governor Gray Davis, 270,000 to Schwarzenegger, 150,000 to Jerry Brown, plus 250,000 to his pet education project. Tons of money everywhere. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, powerful Energy and Water Panel and spent a New Year's at the Resnick Aspen House, tried to help out. The Senator asked the Interior and Commerce agencies to reexamine the science behind the Delta Smelt Environmental Protection Plan. The agencies then spent $750,000 to come to the exact same conclusion that researchers had 2007 restrictions on Delta pumping were warranted. So because Dianne Feinstein is friends, they just wasted $750,000 of our money.

[Gareth]

Must be a nice guest room.

[Dave]

Linda says that they wield no political power when it comes to water policy. Quote, we have no influential influence politically. I swear to you, nobody has a political influence. Nor would we use it.

[Gareth]

No. No. Nor would we use it. No. No. Why would you?

[Dave]

Governor Brown began pushing for a $15 billion plan to construct two 40 foot wide tunnels to carry 76,000 gallons of water per second from the Sacramento river to the Central Valley. The Resnicks then launched Californians for Water Security, a group of business people backing the tunnels. So they just started releasing all these ads and they said it was about safety. It was about, what if earthquakes happen? What are we going to do? Just all this fucking bullshit that had nothing to do with the fact that, like, they just want to fucking put pistachios everywhere. 2016. Palm hits, the skids. The Jews stopped selling after the FTC had found Wonderful guilty of false advertising and ordered the Resnecks to stop making false health claims. Their tanks at the plant were filled with a three year supply and the state's worst drought was having an effect.

[Gareth]

Oh, no.

[Dave]

The Resnicks had gone through their allotment and the water bank and the state water supplies had gone to almost zero for the farms. The pomegranate orchards were now being bulldozed up to 10,000 trees by 2016. But the Resniks were still watering a lot of their orchards. How? Well, remember that guy, John Vidovich?

[Gareth]

Yeah, the guy who stood in front of the plane. He was good for a minute, then he turned bad.

[Dave]

Yeah, that guy.

[Gareth]

Yeah.

[Dave]

He was going around buying up tons of land. Right. I think he has like 100,000 acres of land now. It's all near water. It's all very, very select places. And he was the guy who was going to sue him, but then didn't. Well, he had bought land in nearby Kings county and he was selling Stuart Water from the Dudley Ridge Water District. He was selling everyone water. He's not a farmer. He buys land and sells water or paper water. That's all he does. He literally, at one point in one interview, said that he's doing it to show farmers that what they're doing is unsustainable.

[Gareth]

What a dick.

[Dave]

So wonderful is buying up 50,000 acre feet of water a year in a bunch of hidden secret deals in 2016. Some of the water is coming from farmers in the Tulare Lake basin who are pumping so much out of the ground that the levees protecting the town of Cochrane are sinking by feet to fix the subsidence and keep the town dry in the next flood, residents and the state prison are having to pay $10 million in extra taxes. So these farmers are taking water out of the ground and just selling it to whoever the fuck they want. And now the town has to pay $10 million because everything is getting so fucked up from the land collapsing.

[Gareth]

God damn it.

[Dave]

At the same time, the resniks had bought 300,000 acre feet of water for $200 million from different people. So John Vitovich was the one selling to the Resniks, but he had already been sued by nearby farmers in Kings county for taking too much water out of the ground and moving it. The court settlement states water cannot go outside Kings County. But the Resnicks had a pipeline going to Kings county and taking the water.

[Gareth]

Okay. They drink our oil.

[Dave]

Resnick's. Resnick picks up the water in Dudley Ridge. It's his pipe, not mine. Where he takes the water is none of my business.

[Gareth]

Oh, God damn it. This should all take place in the Cayman Islands.

[Dave]

After Resnik learned a reporter had discovered the pipeline, he had it removed.

[Gareth]

For the right Reasons.

[Dave]

Now, the valley has been sinking forever. And here is a picture from the 70s. So that's a guy from national well, he's a geographer. So, okay, so that's where the land was in 1925. Okay, in 1955. And now in 1955.

[Gareth]

Wait, that's where the water was.

[Dave]

That's where the land was.

[Gareth]

The land was.

[Dave]

Okay, so the land has sunk A telephone size. Right. A telephone pole size. Crazy of human. Down at the. Down at the human bottom there.

[Gareth]

What?

[Dave]

So it's still been. It's still been sinking every year since 1977. It keeps going down.

[Gareth]

That's a hard thing to fathom.

[Dave]

And during the strike, the sinking was insane. Feet and feet and feet. So all the pumping of aquifers has everyone to have to dig deeper to find water. A raisin farmer in Selma had a well that ran dry. He said, quote, Resnik, my old well can't compete with his new wells. I have to go deeper if I can. So he drives people out of business. Because if you're a farmer and you're living on the edge and you have to keep digging deeper, that means each well costs more. And what was 30,000 is now 250,000. Because you're trying to keep up with the asshole, and eventually you can't keep up with the asshole. So much water is being pulled out of aquifers that the state is sinking. The sinking is destroying bridges, cracking irrigation canals and twisting highways. Some places in the state are sinking more than a foot per year. Railroads, bridges, highways, wells, everything is being damaged. Instead of recording it, the different companies or whatever, just go out and fix that one issue and then move on to the next one.

[Gareth]

Sure. Perfect. Yeah. Don't worry about removing the disease. Fix the finger.

[Dave]

It started raining again in autumn of 2016, and the state water project, for the first time in six years, had a surplus. Wonderful could irrigate its orchards again and even put more in the water bank. The Resnicks started planting all the trees where they had dug them up. Of the 22,000 acres they ripped up during the drought, 18,000 acres are being replanted as pistachios.

[Gareth]

Oh, God damn it. Well, obviously there's one big lesson. No more pistachios. Unless you're in Iran, where I hear they're very buttery. Very buttery.

[Dave]

They also decided to get into the wine business in Paso Robles. They bought land and then brought in bulldozers and started tearing up the hillside, destroying thousands of California oak trees. People were furious. Restaurants up and down the coast said they would boycott the Resnik's wine. And then the media was alerted. And then the Resnicks claimed they were sorry. When we learned of the terrible situation, not to mention our poor reputation within the community, we were ashamed and are sorry.

[Gareth]

That's not how shame is supposed to work.

[Dave]

We were asleep at the wheel. We were horrified by the lack of a guard.

[Gareth]

I'm gonna throw up. Give me a bucket.

[Dave]

Aaron, our neighbor and nature.

[Gareth]

Oh my goodness.

[Dave]

We hope that the community will accept our deepest and most sincere apologies.

[Gareth]

Listen to the level of ego that's at the heart of this apology.

[Dave]

And find it in their hearts to forgive us.

[Gareth]

Oh my God.

[Dave]

They pledge to donate the 380 acres to charity. But the oaks, the hundred year old oaks or more are gone. They just destroy a forest.

[Gareth]

But Dave, they're sorry. Once people found out and they knew, they felt bad. That's not how conscience is supposed to work. Once people got angry at us, we felt bad. Once everyone knew our secrets, we were guilty.

[Dave]

I love that. The way it's written, they act like it just something that happened they didn't know.

[Gareth]

Reputation. In an apology about destroying nature, the level of your reputation should be something you can at least bite your fucking lip through.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Gareth]

So God damn, I am like, I want to frame this picture and just get a punching bag.

[Dave]

The state of California has adopted a new law that finally regulates pumping. But when it goes into full effect in a decade or two.

[Gareth]

Oh God.

[Dave]

More than a million acres of cropland across the valley will have to be retired. But then how much water will be left in those aquifers? Now an aquifer can be refilled, but when an aquifer dries up, then it turns into a substance that it like you can't. It's almost like. I think the way it's been described to me is it's like a hard clay that then crumbles. And now you can't refill it, right?

[Gareth]

But as long as it's got something to refill it. But once it's no longer. Once it's empty, you can't refill it. Right.

[Dave]

The Resnicks own 180,000 acres of California, 281 square miles. He's the largest farmer in the country, I believe.

[Gareth]

Well, he looks like a farmer.

[Dave]

121,000 of those acres are irrigated. The Resnicks use more water than any other person in the west. Their 15 million trees consume more than 400,000 acre feet of water a year. The entire City of Los Angeles consumes 587,000 acres a year. Oh my God, Linda, on the company quote, if you call yourself the wonderful company, you'd better damn well be wonderful, right?

[Gareth]

Are you asking, Linda? Are you asking? My God.

[Dave]

So when people say there's a water problem in California, there isn't a water problem in California. And when people say there's human problem in California. Yeah, there's a human problem. People say that in the north, they're stealing our water in Southern California. No, we're not. The people who are stealing the water are these fucking assholes.

[Gareth]

And then they do a good job of making you think it's these other situation.

[Dave]

Yeah, they make it seem like everybody.

[Gareth]

Else laugh all the way.

[Dave]

We fight each other about the water and these motherfuckers. What should be. Is the state should be regulating what.

[Gareth]

You can plant without question.

[Dave]

And you should be using things like cotton and stuff that does not use tons of water. And you, and you have, and you use a variety of foods out there, but it should not be shitloads of the worst crop for water in a place where you need water. And you know how you take the water bank back, you go in there with guns and you say, the water bank is ours. Now this, I mean, seriously, these people. You sent a police force in there and you say off, it's our water now.

[Gareth]

That's the whole thing. That's like. We talk about this all the time, like moving the line forward as far as what you feel from a calamity. Like if you were a able to right now be like, hey, we're out of water. Well, then obviously you're gonna go to their place with guns and be like, knock this shit off. But until there's something on the back, there's still, there's something like actually on people's front porch. It's just like, ah, well, it sucks.

[Dave]

And you see how many pistachios there are now. And my wife loves pistachios. And I tell her this, and she goes, well, can I not eat pistachios anymore? And I said, it doesn't matter. Yeah, they own so much, so they're beyond boycott. The only way to stop them is for the government to come in and stop them. They're beyond anything that we could do as people.

[Gareth]

That's frustrating.

[Dave]

That's where they are. My wife goes, well, what would you do? I said, I would get a gas truck and I would drive it through their orchards, spray the gas everywhere and set them on fire.

[Gareth]

It's Been a fun day.

[Dave]

We shouldn't talk about stuff like this.

[Gareth]

Okay, well, I'm just not gonna eat it, if that's okay.

[Dave]

But there. But that's it. Like, this is what a monopoly is. This is what. When a business gets too big, unless the government wants to stop them, but they pay for the government because our government is. Because Dianne Feinstein is the most fucking corrupt. And when Dianne Feinstein, when Barbara Box was leaving office, she was always involved in negotiations with water. And the day she was leaving office, Dianne Feinstein went behind her back and made a deal with Republicans to fuck everybody over for the Central Valley. Fucking farmers. And Barbara Boxer was fucking livid. But Dianne Feinstein is the govish shit. Because she's like, I don't have to ever work with you again. But these are my. These people give me money. So she fucked everybody also. They're all fucking people. The fucking water tunnels, I believe they're done now. I believe that there's been enough things against them that they cannot happen. But if those water tunnels go through the fucking delta smelt are done. And if the delta smelt die, all the fish all the way up the chain fucking die. It's not like a thing that you have to worry about one fish. It's all the goddamn fish.

[Gareth]

Well, and you also don't know, you know, I mean, that's what we're about to find out. The ramifications of what happens when things in nature that are underappreciated go away. What are the ramifications of that? And that's going to be, you know, a very difficult time. Yeah, you'll miss the days when you thought a crazy lady thought that you could just command bees. When your kids will be like, what are bees?

[Dave]

There's a guy who gives a TED Talk about what happened when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone.

[Gareth]

Oh, right.

[Dave]

And if you want to know how nature works together, go listen to that TED Talk. And literally, the river changed shape. That's how much introducing an animal back into an ecosystem makes a difference. It changed the river shape. Go listen to how it happened. When we take an animal out, it doesn't matter what animal it is. We are fucking ourselves.

[Gareth]

You're also. Yeah. Please join planet change 10.

[Dave]

10P, L A N. Change 10. We're on Twitter. And by the way, if you guys want no update on that, I'm still working on it. I've been so fucking busy because of the holidays and all this other shit, but working together with some companies to get the website done and to get how we can talk to everybody at once. And that's the biggest thing. It's communication and having everyone's numbers and information stored. So that's what we're working on now.

[Gareth]

Really got a good feeling?

[Dave]

Well, people wanted more environmental ones.

[Gareth]

Oh, you like this podcast, do you? Then you're gonna love me on the road doing standup. Go to garethreynolds.com if you are in Richmond Heights, Missouri. St. Louis, let's be honest. January 7th, January 8th, Indianapolis, Batavia, Batavia, someone said online. Illinois, January 9th through the 11th Cedar Rapids, Iowa, January 12th Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 15th through the 18th. Then I'll be in Buffalo, New York, on January 30th. Rutherford, New Jersey, January 31st through February 1st Brea, California, February 7th Eureka, California, February 11th San Francisco, February 12th Sacramento, February 13th Naples, March 24th Charlotte, North Carolina. April 13th, April 14th. I will be in Raleigh, North Carolina. Virginia Beach, April 15th Richmond, Virginia, April 16th Lutherville, basically Baltimore, I think. April 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th. It cuts off there. And Winnipeg this summer in May. Go to Gareth Reynolds.com for tickets and information. You're the gear force. We need you. Gear Force. Hashtag Air Force, Gare Force.