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From Executive Producer Adam McKay, a journalist follows a trickle of information upstream, leading to revelations about California's water and the couple accused of hoarding it to build their own agricultural empire.
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00:00:28Transcribed by ESO, translated by —
00:00:31Should we lug him? Ring the doorbell.
00:00:45Hello?
00:00:46Yeah, hi. My name is Yashaline. I'm a co-director of a documentary about water in California.
00:00:54Uh-huh.
00:00:55Um, I'm wondering if I can get in touch with Linda Resnick in some capacity here
00:01:02to ask her about the water and the drought and some of her work in Lost Hills.
00:01:08I've been trying to get in touch with her through a company, but I've had no success there, so I'm
00:01:14just...
00:01:15Okay, hold on for a moment.
00:01:17Sure.
00:01:33Hello.
00:01:41How's it going?
00:01:45How are you?
00:01:48Sorry, I can't hear you.
00:01:49He asked you just to stop filming.
00:01:52Um, he wants you to stop filming.
00:01:57Um, I was trying to... I was talking to a young lady that keeps cutting out, so I was trying
00:02:04to ask her
00:02:05how I can get in touch with Linda Resnick, because we're making a documentary about water in California.
00:02:11I was trying to get in touch with her.
00:02:12The best person to talk to is a corporate officer.
00:02:17Okay.
00:02:18Uh, if you have a number, I can give you the...
00:02:20Behind these gates is one of the biggest mansions in Beverly Hills.
00:02:25The people who live here aren't movie stars or Hollywood moguls.
00:02:29They're farmers.
00:02:31The biggest in California.
00:02:33They're the ones who make those crazy pistachio ads.
00:02:39Pistachio.
00:02:41What am I doing here outside their house?
00:02:45That's a long story.
00:02:47So let me back up.
00:02:50My name's Yasha Levine.
00:02:53I was born in the Soviet Union.
00:02:55In Leningrad.
00:03:00My parents always hated the Soviet system.
00:03:05They wanted to get us out any way they could.
00:03:15After spending time in refugee camps in Europe,
00:03:18we ended up in San Francisco.
00:03:23Arriving here as an immigrant kid,
00:03:25after living in Russia,
00:03:27what I remember most was a sense of abundance.
00:03:33I grew up thinking California was a paradise.
00:03:43It wasn't until years later,
00:03:45when I started working as a journalist,
00:03:48that my ideas about this place
00:03:50started to change.
00:04:18I was chasing down a story
00:04:20that took me to the edge of California.
00:04:21that took me to the edge of California.
00:04:24Victorville,
00:04:25a separate way out in the middle of nowhere
00:04:28in the Mojave Desert.
00:04:32During the real estate boom years,
00:04:34Victorville was one of the fastest-growing cities in America.
00:04:37A desolate, endless sprawl of some of the cheapest homes
00:04:41that money could buy.
00:04:50It was right after the 2008 Wall Street crash.
00:04:54It felt like a zombie apocalypse
00:04:57had swept the town.
00:05:03I had moved there to investigate the housing bubble,
00:05:06but I stumbled on another strange story.
00:05:10Victorville had expanded so fast during the boom
00:05:13that it ran out of water.
00:05:20To keep feeding the growth,
00:05:22the city turned to a shadowy private market.
00:05:27It was buying water from a wealthy farmer
00:05:29who lived hundreds of miles away,
00:05:32all the way north in Silicon Valley.
00:05:38The deals were worth millions,
00:05:41and they were being funneled
00:05:42through a privately owned water bank.
00:05:48As I dug into the details,
00:05:50I realized that this was much bigger
00:05:52than just Victorville.
00:05:55It turned out that a small group of powerful families
00:05:58had seized control of California's water supply.
00:06:03Even weirder was that the whole thing
00:06:05was being driven by a pair of high-society billionaires
00:06:09from Beverly Hills.
00:06:15They made their money off pistachios.
00:06:18But what really made them stand out
00:06:20was that they owned more water
00:06:22than anyone else on the planet.
00:06:32Maybe it's because I moved here as a kid,
00:06:34but I still had an idealized view of California.
00:06:38This wasn't supposed to be the kind of place
00:06:40where a pair of billionaires could buy up the water supply.
00:06:47So I roped in a filmmaker friend,
00:06:50and we set out to tell their story.
00:07:13California was in the middle of its worst drought in history.
00:07:18There were fires in the Hollywood Hills.
00:07:21It hadn't been this dry in over a thousand years.
00:07:27We figured the best way to tell this story
00:07:29was to take a road trip.
00:07:32So we packed up the car
00:07:34and headed north out of Los Angeles.
00:07:47When you think about wealth in California,
00:07:50you think Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
00:07:54No one thinks about the Central Valley.
00:07:59Flat and desolate landscape
00:08:01carved up in the never-ending farms
00:08:03and feedlots.
00:08:12It's a part of California.
00:08:14No one wants to visit,
00:08:15much less pay any real attention to.
00:08:18And that suits the people
00:08:20who own everything out here just fine.
00:08:36After about two hours on the road,
00:08:39we pulled off the main highway
00:08:40and headed for the west side of the valley.
00:08:48From the road,
00:08:49this place looks like nothing,
00:08:51but we're actually driving
00:08:52through the largest farm in America.
00:08:58even with a drone,
00:09:00you can only capture small sections of it.
00:09:04It covers an area 10 times the size of Manhattan,
00:09:08mostly with almonds and pistachios.
00:09:11And the whole thing belongs to just two people,
00:09:15Stuart and Linda Resnick.
00:09:18If you see them out in public,
00:09:20it's probably going to be on the red carpet in L.A.
00:09:24There's a whole wing with their name on it
00:09:27at the city's art museum.
00:09:31They're billionaires,
00:09:32many times over.
00:09:35They live in the biggest,
00:09:37ritziest mansion on Sunset Boulevard,
00:09:40famous for its celebrity parties.
00:09:50Driving around this dusty backwater,
00:09:53you have to wonder,
00:09:55how did two Beverly Hills types
00:09:56end up out here as America's biggest farmers?
00:10:01Well, it's actually a love story
00:10:04that goes back 50 years.
00:10:09Stuart came to California
00:10:11from New Jersey.
00:10:13He says he grew up poor.
00:10:15That's the way I worked my way through college
00:10:18was cleaning windows
00:10:19in Park La Brea Towers.
00:10:22He managed to flip a janitorial business
00:10:24he started in college
00:10:26for millions of dollars.
00:10:28Then he opened up
00:10:29a private security firm
00:10:31and quickly built it
00:10:32into the largest in L.A.
00:10:35He had 3,000 armed agents
00:10:37and a former chief of police
00:10:38on his payroll.
00:10:45In the 1970s,
00:10:47his company was running security
00:10:48at L.A.'s main airport.
00:10:51It was all going great
00:10:53right up until his guards got busted
00:10:55smuggling blocks of pure heroin.
00:11:01The FBI said the company was linked
00:11:03to organized crime.
00:11:08None of the charges ever stuck to Stuart,
00:11:11but he has hinted in interviews
00:11:13that he grew up around the mob.
00:11:19Linda was born in Philly,
00:11:21but she grew up in Hollywood.
00:11:24Her father was a movie producer
00:11:26famous for making a 1950s cult hit,
00:11:29The Blob.
00:11:31Every one of you watching this screen,
00:11:34look out.
00:11:34The most horrifying monster menace
00:11:37ever conceived
00:11:38will be oozing into this theater.
00:11:45On our fifth date,
00:11:47I confessed to Stuart
00:11:49that I once Xeroxed
00:11:50some top-secret papers.
00:11:52He didn't believe me.
00:11:55But he did believe me months later
00:11:57when the FBI came to the house
00:11:59armed with a subpoena
00:12:00to appear before the grand jury
00:12:02the next morning.
00:12:05In the 60s,
00:12:06Linda hung out in radical circles.
00:12:09I owned an 812 copier
00:12:13that Daniel Ellsberg used
00:12:14to copy the Pentagon Papers.
00:12:18She likes to talk up
00:12:19her counterculture cred,
00:12:21but really she was always
00:12:23more of a marketing person.
00:12:25She started her own agency
00:12:27at the age of 19,
00:12:29Linda Limited.
00:12:30That's how she and Stuart
00:12:32first got together.
00:12:33Well, we met
00:12:34because I had an advertising agency
00:12:36and I was pitching his accounts.
00:12:38so to speak.
00:12:39He didn't give me the account,
00:12:41but he sure gave me the business.
00:12:48After they got married,
00:12:50with Stuart's money,
00:12:51they started buying up companies.
00:12:55The sorts of places
00:12:56Linda could juice up
00:12:57their marketing skills.
00:13:00Mostly trinkets
00:13:01and tacky gifts.
00:13:04They got her to farming
00:13:06almost by accident.
00:13:07for his buying up land
00:13:09as a hedge against inflation
00:13:10in the 1970s.
00:13:14As they were picking up land,
00:13:16they also picked up another company,
00:13:19Paramount Farms.
00:13:30The wagons came in a rush then
00:13:33as the lure of gold
00:13:35drew them with promise
00:13:36of great and sudden wealth.
00:13:39Farming in California
00:13:40goes right back
00:13:41to the gold rush.
00:13:44It was a land grab
00:13:45and a free-for-all.
00:13:54California's first big cattle baron,
00:13:56Henry Miller,
00:13:57built an empire
00:13:58the length of the state,
00:13:59in large part
00:14:00by using corrupt courts
00:14:02and fraud.
00:14:12Even a century ago,
00:14:14farm families had mansions
00:14:16in San Francisco
00:14:16and Oakland.
00:14:19They lived like a new aristocracy,
00:14:22socializing among themselves
00:14:24and intermarrying.
00:14:27Farmers owned banks
00:14:28and railroads.
00:14:29They sat on the boards
00:14:31of major corporations.
00:14:35It's always been a conservative
00:14:37and almost exclusively
00:14:38Anglo world.
00:14:41For generations,
00:14:42these farmers
00:14:42had mostly kept it themselves,
00:14:44operating in the background.
00:14:47That is,
00:14:49until the Resnicks arrived.
00:14:52Rubies in the Orchard
00:14:54will show you
00:14:54how to discover
00:14:56the intrinsic rubies
00:14:57in your metaphorical orchard,
00:14:59in your business,
00:15:01your cause,
00:15:02and even
00:15:04if the brand is you.
00:15:09The thing that set
00:15:10the Resnicks apart
00:15:11was Linda's background
00:15:12in marketing.
00:15:13They took whatever crops
00:15:15were growing on their land
00:15:16and turned them
00:15:17into high-end products.
00:15:19Stuart was
00:15:20very much
00:15:21into this
00:15:21pomegranate idea.
00:15:23I wrote
00:15:24these letters
00:15:25on a piece of paper
00:15:26and I said,
00:15:27here's the name
00:15:29of your product.
00:15:32And that was like
00:15:33divine intervention.
00:15:37Their first big hit
00:15:38was a pomegranate juice.
00:15:41They used their
00:15:42LA connections
00:15:42to get celebrity endorsements
00:15:44and the product took off.
00:15:47Pomecini.
00:15:48Yes.
00:15:48So we fill
00:15:49our one and a half
00:15:50ounces of vodka.
00:15:51Yeah.
00:15:55They hit up on a formula
00:15:56that was actually
00:15:57pretty simple.
00:16:00Take Adele's snack food
00:16:01and launch it
00:16:02with a huge ad campaign.
00:16:17Before the Resnicks,
00:16:18people barely ate
00:16:19these things in America.
00:16:24Now they're in
00:16:25every supermarket.
00:16:27Folks,
00:16:28evidently sales of
00:16:29pistachios
00:16:30have not skyrocketed
00:16:32in the...
00:16:35They brought
00:16:36all their products
00:16:36under one brand
00:16:37and called it
00:16:39The Wonderful Company.
00:16:41We believe that
00:16:43we can do well
00:16:45by doing good.
00:16:47They started
00:16:48to market their company
00:16:49to themselves
00:16:50as a new way
00:16:51of doing business.
00:16:56We started
00:16:57in a little town
00:16:57called Lost Hills.
00:16:592,500 people,
00:17:0041% of the households
00:17:02work for our company,
00:17:04one of our companies
00:17:05out there in the valley.
00:17:07They like to highlight
00:17:08their work in Lost Hills,
00:17:10a small, impoverished town
00:17:11populated mostly
00:17:13by the company's
00:17:14own workers.
00:17:15I was contacted
00:17:17by Linda.
00:17:18You could tell
00:17:19at the beginning
00:17:20of the phone call
00:17:20she was ready
00:17:21to change
00:17:22to the Central Valley.
00:17:23She wanted to change
00:17:24the quality of life
00:17:25in Lost Hills.
00:17:27I had reached
00:17:29a moment in my life
00:17:31where
00:17:33I had to give back
00:17:35in a meaningful way.
00:17:38I did not name
00:17:40the town,
00:17:42but I couldn't have
00:17:43picked a more cinematic
00:17:44name than Lost Hills
00:17:46because it's so much fun
00:17:49to say that Lost Hills
00:17:50has been found.
00:18:04The town is way out
00:18:06on the western edge
00:18:07of the valley,
00:18:07north of the company's
00:18:09fields.
00:18:12Besides the truck
00:18:13stopped off the highway,
00:18:14it's miles away
00:18:15from anywhere.
00:18:22As you drive in
00:18:23from the south,
00:18:24the place doesn't
00:18:24look so bad.
00:18:27There's a nicely
00:18:28renovated promenade
00:18:30leading up to a park
00:18:31in the center of town.
00:18:41We were meeting
00:18:42a local health worker
00:18:43who had agreed
00:18:44to show us around.
00:18:50It wasn't long
00:18:51before someone
00:18:52from the company
00:18:53turned up
00:18:53wanting to know
00:18:54what was going on.
00:18:55I'm Dr. Rosanna Esparza.
00:18:57Who are you?
00:18:59Hello.
00:18:59So nice to meet you.
00:19:01We have community
00:19:02meetings here all the time.
00:19:04She was here for a number
00:19:05of years.
00:19:06Do you mind if we not
00:19:06film this?
00:19:08Do you have permission?
00:19:10Because this is a commercial
00:19:10documentary you're making.
00:19:12Do you have a permission
00:19:12from the county
00:19:13to be out here?
00:19:14Mm-hmm.
00:19:15Do you mind if I see
00:19:16the permits?
00:19:16Do you have a car?
00:19:17If you take a deeper
00:19:18look around this town,
00:19:20it's clear why the company
00:19:21gets nervous about
00:19:22people with cameras.
00:19:25Once you get off
00:19:26the main drag,
00:19:27the place looks nothing
00:19:28like the corporate PR.
00:19:31There's no infrastructure
00:19:33here.
00:19:33So there's no bank,
00:19:35there's no libraries,
00:19:38there's no pharmacy.
00:19:40I could go on and on
00:19:41and list everything
00:19:43that is not.
00:19:46Rosanna grew up
00:19:47out here in California.
00:19:49After she got her Ph.D.,
00:19:51she came back to work
00:19:52in the community.
00:19:53Hello.
00:19:56Do people know you
00:19:57around here?
00:19:58Oh, not really.
00:19:59I mean, I've come to do
00:20:00the health surveys
00:20:01and I come and I ask people
00:20:03to participate in our
00:20:04monthly meetings.
00:20:06I'm trying to familiarize
00:20:08them with me.
00:20:10Do you drink the water
00:20:11here?
00:20:13Out of the faucet?
00:20:15Yeah?
00:20:16You don't think it tastes
00:20:17funny or anything?
00:20:18Drink soda.
00:20:20Drink soda, Omi?
00:20:22What's your favorite soda?
00:20:25Dr. Pepper.
00:20:28You drink water, too?
00:20:30The Central Valley
00:20:31is one of the poorest
00:20:32places in America
00:20:34and Lost Hills is poor.
00:20:36Even by the standards
00:20:37of the Central Valley.
00:20:41There really is nothing here.
00:20:44The town center is just
00:20:45the intersection
00:20:46of two busy highways.
00:20:52If you drive past the spoofed-up promenade,
00:20:55you hit an oil field
00:20:56and a refinery.
00:21:00It was the site
00:21:01of one of the biggest
00:21:01well-blow-outs in history.
00:21:04A giant gas fire
00:21:05that took two weeks
00:21:06to put out.
00:21:12The fumes from the oil refinery
00:21:14add to air quality
00:21:15problems here.
00:21:17Number three,
00:21:19this one,
00:21:19we're getting a lot of
00:21:20benzene.
00:21:22Benzene and ethylbenzene.
00:21:3140 years, she lives here.
00:21:34At first, I spent 15 years
00:21:36working in the field
00:21:38in the pistachio.
00:21:39And it was from Permat,
00:21:42from pistachio,
00:21:44from almonds?
00:21:46Yes, it was from almonds
00:21:47and pistachio.
00:21:49But I don't know,
00:21:50as I am here,
00:21:52I have asthma,
00:21:55but they say that
00:21:56it's the earth,
00:21:58it's the air,
00:21:59but it's the air,
00:22:00where she had
00:22:00something like that.
00:22:03And they have
00:22:04If she had something
00:22:04with her...
00:22:07Thyroiditis.
00:22:09Thyroid?
00:22:10Thyroiditis.
00:22:11The disease has stolen
00:22:11because she was growing up.
00:22:13We have someone
00:22:14else joining us.
00:22:16Pasa fe!
00:22:17We are here
00:22:18for our friends.
00:22:22What else?
00:22:24Asthma?
00:22:24No.
00:22:25The headache?
00:22:26Oh, always a headache.
00:22:28What do they spray
00:22:29Spray from an airplane or how?
00:22:31Sometimes with an airplane and it depends on the spray you use.
00:22:38I have all the substances in the world.
00:22:42As we talked to more people, we found that the other big issue here is that the tap water is
00:22:47undrinkable.
00:22:48It has a lot of chemical. It has a lot of chemical and the water can't be taken easily.
00:22:59It's only because of an emergency, but that's why we don't take it right now.
00:23:04Is there anyone inside the bathroom, Marta?
00:23:07They are little, from here.
00:23:10But look at what they are doing, look.
00:23:13The key is broken.
00:23:15People said it rotted their pipes and gave their children skin problems.
00:23:19Anything the water touched built up a weird chemical residue.
00:23:27This is the engine.
00:23:30Oh, look.
00:23:31The engine is already stuck.
00:23:33Oh, it's like, oh.
00:23:35Look at how the engine goes together.
00:23:38It's like a real, you know.
00:23:41It's like a real thing.
00:23:43It's like the type of pipe.
00:23:44It's already stuck.
00:23:48It's like a real thing.
00:23:50If they could have to examine it, they'd have to realize.
00:23:53Like that that's what the pipe is poured into salt.
00:23:57Yes.
00:24:02is the of your children that is affected like this and then it is also rasping and the more
00:24:10it rasca but that is a problem I think of the water. It starts with a grain and it
00:24:19continues. The problem began a few years back when the town started using a new system to treat
00:24:34unsafe levels of arsenic in the water. Do you remember when you were younger that people drank
00:24:41from the tap water? I used to drink from tap water. When did it change? When? Yeah. Probably about
00:24:49maybe like five years ago. I mean people still do it but it's just their choice you know.
00:24:58The day we came through Rosanna was helping residents take their complaints to the local
00:25:03water board. I'll give you a breakdown of it. It's your responsibility. No but you just came in and told
00:25:08us.
00:25:08I did. It disagrees with what our people did. Of course it disagrees with you. It's not of course.
00:25:14Of course it disagrees with you. We would like to see if it does. This is your report. We're looking
00:25:18to see if you're accurate in your reading of it. I am telling you you cannot have disinfectants. He's
00:25:25telling you just the opposite. You cannot have disinfectants in your water without there being
00:25:31some type of buildup. Well any disinfectant in our water the government is requiring us to put it in. And
00:25:37why
00:25:37is that? And why are your disinfectant levels as high as they are? Apparently they're not.
00:25:46Apparently they are. Well because that's what's causing your overall problem.
00:25:52I don't think you can make that mistake. But thank you very much. We're going to look into that. We'll
00:26:00pull that report out and see if it's accurate what you're saying. The meetings were being run from
00:26:06the floor by an out of town lawyer. No one wanted to acknowledge there was a problem. But you could
00:26:14see it in the wonderful company's park. Even the playground they built right across the road got
00:26:21taken out by the corrosive water.
00:26:29All the cosmetic improvements in Lost Hills made for great PR.
00:26:36But for the underlying problems nothing really changed.
00:26:40If anything Lost Hills was run more like an old company town.
00:26:49Farms in the area were making billions for the wonderful company.
00:26:53But there was no real local wealth. All the money was sucked out to Beverly Hills.
00:27:07To add to the cruel irony. When you leave town you drive over an aqueduct full of water fresh from
00:27:15the mountains.
00:27:18But it's not piped in for towns like Lost Hills.
00:27:29Often called the golden state. The real gold of California is not the yellow metal out of the earth.
00:27:37Infinitely more valuable is the clean fresh water that falls from the sky.
00:27:42For fresh water is the white gold of the great central valley.
00:27:50In California most of the water comes from the north.
00:27:56It falls as snow in the mountains.
00:28:02In spring the snow melts, swirling the rivers.
00:28:12Under the natural pattern for much of the year the valley was a floodplain teeming with life.
00:28:20But by summer it was bone dry.
00:28:26Early farmers built dams and levees.
00:28:30But the technology for managing water was relatively simple.
00:28:34Unless you owned land near a river, there was no year-round supply.
00:28:45The invention of the centrifugal pump changed all that.
00:28:52Far more spread out into the driest parts of the state.
00:28:56For the first time California became the breadbasket of America.
00:29:16The water they were pumping had been collecting underground for thousands of years.
00:29:23They drained it within a matter of decades.
00:29:32For the first time California's big farmers needed a new source of water to keep expanding.
00:29:45Lucky for them, the government came in to bail them out.
00:29:53Under the New Deal, a massive public program of dam building began.
00:30:00A colossal dam will be built, rising higher than the Washington Monument.
00:30:06The highest overflow type of dam in the world.
00:30:13Plenty of water falls and flows, but in the wrong places.
00:30:19Within just a few decades, every major and minor river was dammed,
00:30:24with water diverted into concrete canals that crisscrossed the state.
00:30:29Precise water control is vital in operating an aqueduct.
00:30:38California's rivers were turned into a technological system.
00:30:42A computer-controlled environment where water could be turned on or off,
00:30:47moved hundreds of miles at the push of a button.
00:30:53It was the biggest network of aqueducts in the world.
00:30:58History will bear out how we fulfilled our obligations to the future.
00:31:04Not an easy task in a world strained by many things.
00:31:13The population of this arid land has doubled since 1950.
00:31:19Now shows signs of tripling.
00:31:26The development of these dams and aqueducts
00:31:29was always sold as being necessary for California's growing population.
00:31:37But in reality, only a fraction of the water ever made it to the cities.
00:31:44Most of it went to a small clique of corporate farmers,
00:31:47who grew crops for export.
00:31:49Most of it went to a high-tech agricultural wasteland.
00:32:01Over the course of the century,
00:32:03the Central Valley was converted from a lush natural habitat
00:32:07into a high-tech agricultural wasteland.
00:32:25The place is littered with oil wells, prisons, and garbage pits.
00:32:37It's an inhospitable dead zone.
00:32:46Driving around, it feels more like one of Elon Musk's Mars colonies than any sort of farm.
00:32:55It's not really what you imagine when you think of California,
00:32:59with its green image and organic produce.
00:33:07We were following Rosanna as she did environmental work around the valley.
00:33:14She set up a small event overlooking an oil field to raise awareness about water pollution.
00:33:20We're not trying to shut anybody down.
00:33:22We're trying to bring awareness and education to the community.
00:33:27We arrived just as she was being swamped by oil industry people.
00:33:31Would you like some information?
00:33:32I got it.
00:33:33Oh, okay.
00:33:35California has decided that fracking can be done safely, okay?
00:33:38The CCST report, sir, did not say...
00:33:41It's very clear about that. It's very clear about that.
00:33:44So let's just be clear.
00:33:45It's been done safely for 60 years.
00:33:47That's right.
00:33:48Show me the dead bodies, lady.
00:33:52Show me the dead bodies.
00:33:54Put a name on it.
00:33:55Would you like some information, sir, so you can be more clear in your thoughts?
00:34:01Nothing I like better than reading drivel and lies.
00:34:05Okay.
00:34:06Thank you very much.
00:34:07Thanks for coming out, too.
00:34:08I appreciate it.
00:34:10You guys don't be so upset.
00:34:14Anybody like you wants to run my life, I get upset.
00:34:19You are being aggressive in your language.
00:34:20We get an opportunity and she's not interrupting.
00:34:23If you'd like to be in the oil industry, that's your right.
00:34:26I have a right to be an environmentalist.
00:34:29You can be as stupid as you want, and you have that privilege.
00:34:34You guys could move out of the way and let us have an opportunity.
00:34:37We didn't get in your guys' way, so that'd be great.
00:34:41Colombia and Venezuela.
00:34:43We're talking about countries that we fight billion-dollar cocaine wars with.
00:34:47Okay?
00:34:48We're talking about countries that suppress women and gays.
00:34:50And every time you stop an oil project here, you are supporting that.
00:34:56I know that you don't believe that, but that is exactly what is happening.
00:35:09Oil is the other big industry out here.
00:35:14In most places, it's been around longer than farming.
00:35:20When the Resnicks were first buying up land, a lot of it came from oil companies.
00:35:25Mobile and Chevron.
00:35:27Their farms sit right on top of an active oil field.
00:35:37You can see oil derricks everywhere, some of them right in the middle of orchards.
00:35:47All this drilled-out land was going cheap back in the 1970s.
00:35:52Now it's where the wonderful company grows its healthy snacks.
00:35:57What I'm checking here, I always check these almonds right here,
00:36:01because here they had the big drilling mud pit.
00:36:05And when these almonds get a little bigger and the roots go a little deeper,
00:36:09they're going to be in this waste from drilling these wells, which is buried right here.
00:36:16But I'm going to wait to see.
00:36:18Are you telling me that he grew carrots and potatoes right in the
00:36:24waste earth that they were dug up from the oil well?
00:36:27They were dumping everything into these pits because nobody's watching.
00:36:31That's all buried right here.
00:36:34They were caught doing that because I took a video of them.
00:36:38This is Tom Franz, a local almond farmer.
00:36:45He's showing us where he caught a company dumping fracking waste in the middle of an orchard.
00:36:50There was no cleanup order.
00:36:53Every one of these wells you see had a pit like that,
00:36:56where that stuff is buried now just under the surface.
00:37:06Tom's a rare character for these parts.
00:37:10There aren't many people here who speak out about the oil industry.
00:37:18They drain it down into this first pond right here.
00:37:22And there's a lot of oil in there still.
00:37:25So then they take water from underneath, the oil's on top.
00:37:29When it rains up in here, that goal is, it's like a flash flood.
00:37:34And all this contamination gets washed all the way down to Pozo Creek.
00:37:40We don't know what toxic chemicals might be in this wastewater.
00:37:44We know it's very salty.
00:37:46We know there's still oil in it.
00:37:51Oil companies dump their wastewater in isolated spots all over the valley.
00:37:56It mostly just sits there, leeching into the ground.
00:38:03It's expensive to get rid of it.
00:38:05It's always been a problem for the industry.
00:38:11Tom took us to a larger set of pools run by Chevron.
00:38:16As we drove up, we could smell the petroleum wafting in the air.
00:38:26These pits didn't look quite as foul as some of the smaller ones.
00:38:31That's because Chevron was preparing the water for farm use.
00:38:35The filtration, we understand, is some walnut shells about 8 to 10 miles upstream of here,
00:38:44where the water's coming by pipeline.
00:38:48You see the crud floating, that's several hundred thousand gallons per minute.
00:38:57Letting it flow like this by gravity to some farmers who are desperate for water is really
00:39:03a money-saving enterprise for Chevron.
00:39:07For the last 20 years, Chevron has been dumping its wastewater into irrigation canals,
00:39:14and bizarrely marketing the whole thing as a recycling initiative.
00:39:20Most oil fields produce water as a byproduct or a waste product.
00:39:27Chevron in the Kern River field takes that water, conditions it, and brings it into agricultural use.
00:39:33I've always felt that we could feed the world if they would allow us enough water.
00:39:38They do care.
00:39:39Chevron has stepped up to the plate, not just with words, but with actions.
00:39:45And we're really happy they're here.
00:39:59We wanted to see who was using this water,
00:40:01so we traced the canal all the way down to a pumping station.
00:40:09All around us were orchards owned by the wonderful company.
00:40:16Not only were their farms right on top of an oil field,
00:40:19it turned out they were using oil waste water to irrigate their crops.
00:40:29news about this got out just as we were filming,
00:40:33and it blew up as a minor scandal.
00:40:35Don't pollute our fruit!
00:40:40Don't pollute our fruit!
00:40:44People protested at the company's headquarters,
00:40:47but they brushed it off and insisted it was all perfectly safe.
00:40:55The story eventually disappeared into the news cycle.
00:41:04Once you know how things work out here,
00:41:06it's not that surprising that farmers would be irrigating with oil waste.
00:41:11You can see the promise of this place.
00:41:14It's a vast expanse of land, perfect for farming.
00:41:20The only thing holding back business is access to a steady supply of water.
00:41:27No one's paying attention to what you do out here, so you grow with whatever you can get.
00:42:10The thing about pistachios, it takes a lot of water to grow them.
00:42:18By the time they make it to harvest,
00:42:20every pound of pistachios has used over a thousand gallons.
00:42:28And the trees need a constant supply of water to survive.
00:42:32If you hit a dry year, you have to rip out your orchard and start again.
00:42:43The Resnicks learned this the hard way back in the 1980s.
00:42:49California was hit by a major drought, and the state simply cut off their supply.
00:42:58This happened just as their new ag business was taking off.
00:43:04They realized how dependent they were on government-supplied water.
00:43:13By the 1970s, California's water system was so heavily built out, the state started running out of rivers to dam.
00:43:24So they looked for other ways to store water.
00:43:32South of the Resnicks fields, just off the highway, you can find one of those projects.
00:43:39It's a giant natural aquifer developed into a water bank.
00:43:46In wet years, water from the aqueducts and local rivers is pumped here and stored underground.
00:43:53It can hold enough water to supply Los Angeles for a year.
00:44:01It was intended to protect cities in the event of a drought.
00:44:06But for the Resnicks, the bank was a prime target.
00:44:11In the 90s, they lobbied to privatize it.
00:44:20It all happened in a backroom deal, and they got it for basically nothing.
00:44:26At the same time, they rewrote the rules for water in California, allowing it to be sold on open markets
00:44:33like any other commodity.
00:44:38That water deal that I came across in Victorville, the one that got me started on this whole story, it
00:44:45came from here.
00:44:49Controlling the bank allowed them to expand their orchards on a massive scale.
00:44:56As they expanded, the amount of water they controlled also grew.
00:45:04Today, their farms use more water than California's biggest cities.
00:45:10In a single year, enough to supply San Francisco for a decade.
00:45:22These days, the Resnick stake in the water bank alone is worth around a billion dollars.
00:45:42In the water bank, we drove up north.
00:45:47After a few hours, we arrived at a place known as the Delta.
00:45:54It's where California's biggest rivers meet before they flow out into the San Francisco Bay.
00:46:02It's where California's water.
00:46:03Compared to the south, it's green and full of life.
00:46:06A patchwork of rivers and small farms.
00:46:14All the water that feeds California's aqueducts is pumped out of here.
00:46:20What used to be a free-flowing river estuary is now a heavily managed network of canals.
00:46:28The salmon and steelhead come on their way to ancestral spawning grounds.
00:46:34The migrants, guided by a rack that blocks the river, ascend a fish ladder which leads to a holding pond.
00:46:44As they modified the rivers, all sorts of high-tech systems were put in place to help the fish.
00:46:51But it doesn't take a genius to see they were doomed to fail.
00:46:55In specially refrigerated and aerated trucks, the fingerlings are hauled downstream and released a safe distance from the intake.
00:47:06Since the aqueducts were built in the 1970s, fish populations have dropped to near zero.
00:47:15The whole area is on the verge of a mass extinction.
00:47:28Even in parts of the delta that have been preserved, there's an eerie calm.
00:47:37Just a generation ago, people talked about flocks of birds that blacked out at the sky.
00:47:44It used to be one of the best fishing spots in the country.
00:47:50Now, it's basically a dead zone.
00:47:56In spite of all the problems, there's a long-standing plan to expand the aqueducts.
00:48:04Two giant tunnels that would grab one of the rivers feeding the delta and funnel it directly south.
00:48:14Environmental groups here said the Resnicks were behind a new effort to push the tunnels through.
00:48:20Stewart Resnick, through Paramount Farms, created a group called Californians for Water Security.
00:48:29They are the marketing umbrella for the Delta Tunnels project to the rest of the state.
00:48:37Basically, what they did was they put together a coalition of special money interests
00:48:43to do focus group messaging on how to sell the tunnels to people.
00:48:49As well as a big PR campaign, the Resnicks called in favors from a senator to try and bury reports
00:48:56on the project environmental impacts.
00:49:01The thing is, the less fresh water you have flown through the delta, the more ocean water creeps in.
00:49:09The whole area gets turned into a dead, salty marsh.
00:49:13I'm trying to get you some really good ones here in the shade.
00:49:19Jerry's family has been farming here for generations.
00:49:23When we were younger, we used to carry a salt shaker around with us in our pickup all the time.
00:49:29You get hungry, you just stop and get a couple.
00:49:32We're in a struggle now for a commodity that's short and is water.
00:49:39And either they win and we go broke, or we win and they have to contract the size of these
00:49:46operations.
00:49:48Trouble, they take our water away, we're done.
00:49:52Because they're still going to get what little water or much water as they can.
00:49:57They'll still be able to grow with it.
00:49:59But if we end up with water that's 10 times saltier than it is now, we can't grow this kind
00:50:05of crop down here.
00:50:06When somebody's down there who can call up the senator on the phone and say,
00:50:10we need more water down here, and then the senator calls up the bureau and says,
00:50:14what can you do to get more water down there?
00:50:16Send me four tickets to your $25,000 a plate fundraiser.
00:50:20I think that's true.
00:50:24You've never been invited?
00:50:26Not yet.
00:50:27You know, those guys talking about Paramount Farms and Resnick.
00:50:34Paramount Farms sound like farming, but there's people aren't farmers.
00:50:38They're in it for scalping what they can now, and two or three generations from now they could care less.
00:50:48That's the way it is.
00:50:49This is pretty much family farming up here in Northern California.
00:51:00It's not the first time in California's history that a small farming region got screwed over for its water.
00:51:08The whole story is a straight rerun of California's most infamous water heist.
00:51:31If you drive up into the Sierra Nevada mountains and follow the river down,
00:51:36you'll find the Owens Valley.
00:51:41At the turn of the last century, there was a big, pristine lake here.
00:51:54Today, it's completely drained and toxic stain on the landscape.
00:52:08In the early 1900s, the population of Los Angeles was exploding, doubling every couple of years.
00:52:20There was plenty of land, but the developers needed water.
00:52:26They set their sights on the Owens Valley and lobbied to fund construction of the L.A. Aqueduct.
00:52:55Today, the Owens River wants to bear an abandoned farmland.
00:53:01It's water owned by suburbs, hundreds of miles away.
00:53:35The Owens Valley was drained to feed L.A. suburban sprawl.
00:53:41Now, the wonderful company is trying to destroy the biggest river estuary on the west coast of America,
00:53:47all to feed a snack food bubble.
00:53:53We wanted to get the Resnicks, or at least someone from their company, on camera to answer some questions.
00:53:58Yeah, hi. How's it going? My name is Yasha Levine. I'm the co-director of a documentary about water in
00:54:05California.
00:54:06I've been trying to get in touch with someone from the wonderful company.
00:54:10We had been putting out calls and emails for months.
00:54:14Just got to redirect you.
00:54:16Since we were back in L.A., we decided to try just turning up at their office.
00:54:22Ready?
00:54:32Hey, how's it going?
00:54:34Who's this guy?
00:54:35Oh, he's just an operator. We're making a documentary about water in California,
00:54:40and so just trying to get in touch with the wonderful company.
00:54:44What I suggest is you go online and get the information for a person you need to talk to.
00:54:49Yeah.
00:54:50And make an appointment, and then they would know.
00:54:53Yeah, unfortunately, I've been trying to do that for the past couple of weeks, and
00:54:59pretty much impossible to get in touch with them.
00:55:03That's the process. We can't do anything for you.
00:55:06But this is their building, right?
00:55:08Yeah, this is the building.
00:55:09Yeah, and so you can't, there's nothing you can, no one you can call down from.
00:55:15You have a card I could pass the information on.
00:55:18Short of trying to get arrested in some kind of stunt, we weren't going to get any closer than this.
00:55:27The reality is that unless you're doing a puff piece, there's no way to get to these people.
00:55:35Hello, I'm Linda Resnick, and today we're talking about making a difference.
00:55:40There's endless interviews where they talk about their marketing and their philanthropy.
00:55:46My passion today is giving back.
00:55:50And I think the thing that excites me the most is the philanthropy that we do.
00:55:56But no one ever gets to ask them about how they managed to grab enough water to supply this whole
00:56:01city.
00:56:11It's hard to fully grasp what private control of California's water supply really means.
00:56:18But when we travel to a small town hit hard by the drought,
00:56:22we found a version of the bigger story playing out on a local level.
00:56:30East Porterville is a small town on the east side of the valley,
00:56:34in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
00:56:39As the drought peaked all over town, the wells went dry.
00:56:44People were living off makeshift tanks for bathing and cleaning.
00:56:51We met up with Donna, a local, who was organizing deliveries of donated bottled water.
00:56:59It was a miserable situation.
00:57:01A lot of people barely had any support.
00:57:05So this is the water that you have to work with?
00:57:08This is the house water instead of the tap?
00:57:11Yeah.
00:57:13I don't want to do nothing because I don't have water and I guess I want to leave.
00:57:17I don't want to clean. How can I clean? My half half is with this water and...
00:57:32Juana, do you have a knife or something that you get the thing open?
00:57:42I know I have to have a knife tilting that or...
00:57:45Sure.
00:57:48Can I help you out?
00:57:56Let's get a couple more in there.
00:58:06As we did the rounds with Donna, we saw how many people were affected.
00:58:12Over a thousand homes had lost access to running water.
00:58:17Like I said, she's the oldest member of our out-of-water club.
00:58:21She has been my angel, I swear to God.
00:58:25I don't know what I would have done without her.
00:58:28Yeah, when did you run under water?
00:58:30Well, I was real upset because I've never been alone, you know, without anything like that.
00:58:37And it was hard, you know, but she came right in and did it.
00:58:44Most of all, taking a bath every night, I miss that terribly.
00:58:51So, and they had me to wash my hair once a week.
00:59:00But I watched her struggle so much.
00:59:03She was always so sweet and she kept trying to keep all her trees and her plants alive.
00:59:09And then a lot of them died.
00:59:10And then one day I came with a reporter.
00:59:13Oh my God.
00:59:14She was crying.
00:59:18She said she was watching everything she had die.
00:59:26And we were all kind of going through it at that time.
00:59:30Hi, you big mean boy.
00:59:33Hi.
00:59:37All sorts of people had been cut off.
00:59:40For a while, the story was all over the news.
00:59:47It was covered like a natural disaster.
00:59:50Like the only reason for the shortage of water was the drought.
00:59:58But after we spent a few weeks hanging around town, the whole other side to the story emerged.
01:00:06You're talking about the dam of Lake Success or something?
01:00:09No, no, no, no.
01:00:10Which dam are you talking about?
01:00:11It's a dam that when you cross the river below the park, below the park, there is a bridge.
01:00:20And as soon as you cross the bridge, you can see the water right there running through the river.
01:00:26But about 600 or 800 feet below, there is a company that established themselves as,
01:00:35I don't know, water belongs to everybody.
01:00:39What does the company do?
01:00:41They dam the water and they pump it and they pump it up to the fields up to the south.
01:00:48I see, so it's for agriculture.
01:00:52It's for agriculture, yes.
01:00:56Upstream, the river that fed the town's wells was running.
01:00:59There you have it.
01:01:01What do you think it is?
01:01:06The water disappeared after it passed through some private land.
01:01:10Why does no one talk about it?
01:01:12Why?
01:01:13Because they are afraid.
01:01:15Money.
01:01:16Money.
01:01:17Money.
01:01:20That's what it is.
01:01:21They don't want to reveal a scam.
01:01:22They don't want to put themselves in danger.
01:01:26Actually, if they kill me, they do me a favor.
01:01:30I'm dying already.
01:01:31So, what the heck?
01:01:33You know, this is totally wrong.
01:01:38This is totally wrong.
01:01:40Sure enough, just a mile downstream, everything was bone dry.
01:01:47As we filmed, another local showed up.
01:01:51He wanted to blow the whistle on his ex-boss.
01:01:54But I'm getting tired of seeing this death.
01:01:57And I've been wanting to see somebody with a camera.
01:01:59I saw you when I was driving this.
01:02:00I turned around and came back.
01:02:01Broad Hudson, right?
01:02:02Yes, sir.
01:02:04I was the oversight for Rosedale Water Company all the way up until June of 2015.
01:02:11They just voted me out.
01:02:13He's got a pond back there.
01:02:15He put a pump on the river in 1998.
01:02:19He started pulling water out of that river and putting it into his pond to supply these guys with water.
01:02:26The whole story was mixed up in a divorce and a local feud.
01:02:30But Rod said he could show us the secret dam on the river.
01:02:34I could take you down there.
01:02:39I'm a shareholder with the company, so I have a right to go down there.
01:02:43But I can't be around with my wife because we're going through a divorce over all this.
01:02:48I see.
01:02:49You're the Mitch Brown.
01:02:52Someone drive down here with me and show you this.
01:02:54Okay, but yeah, be careful.
01:02:56You know, we don't want you to buy a measure.
01:02:58It's going good.
01:03:04This company here is Rosedale Water Company, which Mitch Brown is the vice president of.
01:03:12And they're pumping 800 gallons a minute right here on this site.
01:03:18Plus there's a pump line right over there.
01:03:22It goes across the river and those three pumps over there and they're pumping 300 gallons a minute.
01:03:27They're allowed 675 gallons a minute out of all four of those pumps.
01:03:33So they're illegally pumping water.
01:03:37You'll see the dam.
01:03:38It's all overgrown, but he built a dam.
01:03:41Step over there and you can get a real good picture from that way, that way.
01:03:45He's built a dam and made the water go over that way to where it gets closer to his property.
01:03:50So the pumping here, the illegal pumping that you're saying here, is directly affecting the world?
01:03:54Yes.
01:03:54So why is that not being talked about?
01:03:57Because money.
01:04:01American greed.
01:04:06From the air, you could see that orchards and a rock plant were pulling water from the river,
01:04:12hoarding it in a giant pond.
01:04:15As we asked around, other locals backed up the story.
01:04:19He gave me a donation.
01:04:24That's nice of him.
01:04:27Yeah, that's what I thought too.
01:04:32There's some people that say he's diverting water from the river.
01:04:38It works.
01:04:47According to Rod, there was a sort of old boys network in town.
01:04:52The newspaper, the cops, Mitch, they were all buddies.
01:04:58We tried to get a hold of Mitch, but figured we'd have about as much luck getting him on camera
01:05:03as we had with the Resnex.
01:05:05He's out of town today.
01:05:07It's an independent documentary about water in California and the drought in California.
01:05:15It's an independent documentary, so we're not making it for any
01:05:19TV news station or anything like that.
01:05:26To our surprise, after a couple of days of calling, someone got back to us with a direct number.
01:05:55Mitch said he was happy to give us his side of the story.
01:05:59As well as the rock plant, he had orchards, a ranch, and was a major local landlord.
01:06:07He even had his fingers in the waste management business.
01:06:15We arranged to meet him as he started to work for the day at the crack of dawn.
01:06:24What are these logos on your shirt?
01:06:29Does that have to do with the...
01:06:30Oh, this is the team roping shirt I got.
01:06:33It's one of the ones I won in Reno roping up in Reno here a few years back.
01:06:39This is an 09 shirt.
01:06:40Just roping cattle.
01:06:42Yeah, team roping.
01:06:44You know, we're probably getting in trouble for not wearing my hard hat at the plant, you know.
01:06:48Don't show this part damn job.
01:06:54You can see all the water that funnels down to the two sand screws.
01:06:58That goes back out the back.
01:07:01And we'll head back over to the silt lawn to show you where that water circulates from
01:07:06and show you how we keep it in a closed loop system here.
01:07:10As he told it, the plant had a sort of recycling system for the water it used.
01:07:15We have several wells.
01:07:17I think that we probably replenish our own wells just because it's such a sand and gravel area,
01:07:24and our wells are very shallow here.
01:07:26We keep a lot of people busy, and so we need water to do that.
01:07:31And without the water, we're going to send 50, 60 people home without a job.
01:07:38And I can even forget what they call these, but these are old trees that my grandfather
01:07:43probably planted here in the 1930s.
01:07:45These trees are probably 60 years old, some of these.
01:07:49But that is a good, yeah, these are great.
01:07:57So there's your orange juice for the morning.
01:08:00Exactly.
01:08:01I'll keep you nice and strong.
01:08:03Thank you, all right.
01:08:07We own all of this country over here.
01:08:10We own from there about three miles.
01:08:13I own clear over to the back side of the lake.
01:08:16Wow.
01:08:17I own, so my mom and dad, when I was a kid, we owned, we, I planted,
01:08:23I helped my grandfather and my dad plant every one of these trees.
01:08:27According to Mitch, Rod was an old friend who had gone off the rails.
01:08:31What can I tell you?
01:08:32I mean, I've known him ever since we've been kids, and in the last five years, he has chosen
01:08:41the path of drugs and alcohol and gotten away from the church.
01:08:51He's gotten away from everything that has any value in life, family, everything.
01:08:58He's gotten away from that.
01:08:59The board took his position away from him and gave it to his wife because the wife could
01:09:13manage that, and Sandy still manages it.
01:09:15And she is a great gal, does her job.
01:09:19But with Rod's addiction, and he just has gone off the deep end.
01:09:26I've had a couple of people say that, you know, there's like a dam up here, like a secret dam
01:09:34that's being sort of used to hold the water back, and that's why it's not reaching the
01:09:39lower parts of the river and recharging the aquifers.
01:09:42That is incorrect, for sure.
01:09:45Because I border most of the river all the way down.
01:09:48I probably own, you know, half a mile's worth of river frontage down through here.
01:09:57And there's no secret dam.
01:09:59No, there's no secret dam.
01:10:03When we came back later to shoot more footage of the dam, the whole area had been dug out,
01:10:09and the water was flowing again.
01:10:13When we phoned Mitch about it, he spun a story about a digger stolen from his plant,
01:10:18and warned us about Rod, saying he was a wife beater.
01:10:23But trying to pin down who really had rights to this river water, and how much, was no easy task.
01:10:31Upstream from all this, there's a much bigger dam for the town.
01:10:34And as far as the people running it were concerned, this water was almost entirely owned by private companies.
01:10:42Mitch had explained the same thing to us.
01:10:45When people, you know, built the dam, there were people that paid to build the dam.
01:10:53Because of the expense that they had to forego, they got to, in fact, store water,
01:11:01and they could use it when they needed it.
01:11:03But the first water users are, you know, obviously upstream.
01:11:09And then it flows downstream to the lesser, lesser shares.
01:11:23As far as local businesses were concerned,
01:11:26the river was more like an irrigation ditch for transferring water to different owners.
01:11:31If some of that water was trickling down into residential wells,
01:11:35well, those people were lucky, but they had no real legal claim to it.
01:11:46The people who run this system are good at making it sound like it's all totally above board.
01:11:52It's all about who's up river, and who developed their claim first.
01:11:59We saw that there was a Native American tribe further upstream from the dam.
01:12:04So we drove up to ask them about their water rights.
01:12:09They stole it.
01:12:11They didn't buy nothing.
01:12:13They stole it.
01:12:15Just like if you left $1,000 sitting on the seat of your car,
01:12:19and I walked out there, and your car wasn't locked, and I seen it,
01:12:23and I took that money, straight up stole it.
01:12:27That's what I'm talking about.
01:12:30Back in the 1930s, an official who said they were acting on the tribe's behalf
01:12:35signed away all their rights to the river.
01:12:39They've been fighting to get them back ever since.
01:12:47The people in East Porterville never questioned who had rights to the river before their walls went dry.
01:12:53But as soon as there was a shortage, it became clear who really had control.
01:13:00The big farmers and landowners here took what they needed,
01:13:04even if that meant cutting off water to thousands of people.
01:13:25The big farmers and landowners here took what they needed to do.
01:13:26You could see this all over the valley.
01:13:29As the drought raged and people in cities had to cut back on water,
01:13:34farmers were putting in new plantings of almonds and pistachios.
01:13:39There were new trees going in.
01:13:42Thousands and thousands of acres.
01:13:47Drought or no drought, some farmers had plenty of water, and they were always expanding.
01:14:22The last stop on our trip was the American Pistachio Growers Convention, down in Palm Springs.
01:14:29The American Pistachio Growers
01:14:30The American Pistachio Growers
01:14:30The American Pistachio Growers
01:14:36Every time it rains, it rains
01:14:41It is from heaven
01:14:46But you know each cloud contains
01:14:51It is from heaven
01:14:56The American Pistachio Growers
01:14:57The American Pistachio Growers
01:14:57The American Pistachio Growers
01:15:01The funny thing is I see an awful lot of water around here.
01:15:06And I'd really like to know what their deal is.
01:15:14we didn't really know what to expect here but along with water to our surprise they started
01:15:21talking about the industry's rivalry with iran the iranian packaging that we've seen
01:15:28do we think it's more sophisticated than ours and my answer to that would be
01:15:32no not at all based on my observation as a result of the negotiation on the iran nuclear deal
01:15:43iranian pistachios will now be allowed into the u.s one of the most bizarre things about california's
01:15:50pistachio industry is that it was born out of america's meddling in the middle east i want to
01:15:56go all the way back to 1979 when iranian students took our embassy officials hostage after the
01:16:06iranian revolution the u.s back monarch was thrown out american hostages were taken and the u.s
01:16:15retaliated by blocking trade with iran historically iran has always been the world's biggest exporter
01:16:24of pistachios but the embargo allowed california's tiny industry to get a global foothold and after
01:16:34several decades of continued hostility and sanctions the u.s industry grew from being almost non-existent
01:16:42to number one in the world a lot of pistachio farmers who had met on our trip were familiar
01:16:51over the history okay back in the days when the shah was still there uh and and we had open
01:16:58trade
01:16:58with iran for pistachios all of our pistachios came from there i don't i don't even know if we grew
01:17:04any
01:17:04here when the shah was kicked out and we broke relations and and and stopped importing uh pistachios
01:17:14from there we were kind of took on took on the challenge of growing pistachios even to this day
01:17:21farmers are aware that improving relations with iran would be bad for business the iran embargo was
01:17:29they can't sell their fruit to anybody else but iran okay and they can't go over to the saudi's or
01:17:40anybody else because we put the embargoes on them and that was hurting them but now with this new
01:17:47this this president that we got now he's so big he's just screwing the pooch we have arabs that live
01:17:56around here we have arabs that take care of that own pistachio orchards well how do you feel
01:18:03you know does a muslim bother you seeing the reactions of these small-time farmers we couldn't
01:18:11help but wonder what the resnicks were doing their company alone was bigger than the rest of the
01:18:16industry combined and they've been very open about their competition with iran
01:18:25when we dug into some records we found that they were giving millions to all sorts of lobby groups
01:18:31slush funds that channel money into pushing for sanctions and pumping out anti-iran propaganda
01:18:39they also made big donations to california republicans who are hawkish on iran
01:18:46what is iran doing around the world well they're funding terrorism the iranian state
01:18:53is the largest funding mechanism of as a nation state of terrorism around the globe
01:19:02more surprisingly they were on the board of several major think tanks
01:19:07including the washington institute for near east policy
01:19:13they've been on the board for over a decade it's an organization that badly wants war with iran
01:19:20i frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough and it's very hard for me to see how the united
01:19:27states president can get us to war with iran one can combine other means of pressure with sanctions
01:19:37i mentioned that explosion on august 17th we could step up the pressure
01:19:45i mean look people iranian submarines periodically go down
01:19:49someday one of them might not come up who would know why
01:19:56when you look through the washington institute's members it's like a who's who of familiar faces from
01:20:02the iraq war all of us do know each other rather well and i see some good friends in the
01:20:08audience
01:20:10i'm proud to say your former deputy director john hannah
01:20:14is now my assistant for national security affairs and you can't have him back yet
01:20:20thank you please sit down please please please i uh i'm sorry i just i'm sorry i wasn't prepared i
01:20:28was just
01:20:29uh you caught me in the middle of flipping through my iraq war scrapbook
01:20:37many of us are convinced that saddam hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon
01:20:43there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends against our allies and against us
01:20:51when the speech was over there was not a dry eye in the house nor an uncrapped pair of pants
01:20:59in america
01:21:01it's kind of weird watching these old colbert clips now
01:21:06stephen isn't he brilliant
01:21:11you think i'm kidding anyway
01:21:16i follow her everywhere with that
01:21:21i have no pride anyway steven's fantastic and i guess it takes a nut to sell a nut what do
01:21:30you think
01:21:30the whole time the resnicks had stephen colbert as their brand mascot
01:21:35they've been in bed with a neoconservative crowd lobbying for war
01:21:40the secret to world peace is
01:21:44pistachios
01:21:49dennis rodman does it because he's nuts wonderful pistachios get cracking
01:22:05in a long line of wealthy farmers to plunder the central valley the resnicks aren't anything new
01:22:13the liberal social politics the flashy marketing they're just the modern flavor of something as old as america itself
01:22:25farming here isn't so different from the historic booms in gold and oil
01:22:30it's an extraction industry but the resource that's being mined to depletion is water
01:22:40it might make sense if the food they were growing was necessary for survival
01:22:45but it's mostly crops for export nuts where the entire demand was created by marketing
01:22:54these companies don't care if they suck the rivers completely dry
01:22:59or if they're lobbying for war nothing matters but the quest for endless growth
01:23:09it's like the blob mindlessly expanding swallowing everything in its path
01:23:27looking at this bizarre bleak landscape in the central valley
01:23:31it's what the planet would look like if it was terraformed to meet the needs of billionaires
01:23:37all of nature turned into a commodity optimized for wealth extraction
01:23:44a dystopian future right in front of our eyes
01:23:58my family fled the soviet union right as the whole thing was crashing down
01:24:07my story should have been about a young man being saved from a grim fate
01:24:14but here too even if you try to ignore it all the cracks are showing
01:24:22i realized that my family escaped one failed system only for us to arrive in another
01:24:29and this time there isn't any alternative or another place to run
01:24:33the moon
01:24:34where we can i believe in that he was never about something
01:24:53the other place could have been supposed to be able to find the part of our other
01:24:53it's very hard to bring out that even if you don't know what i said
01:24:53it was very hard to bur architects
01:25:00that was a nice story
01:25:00they were beginning
01:25:01and we thought of the divine event
01:25:06It's times like these that make what we do even more important.
01:25:12Many of you have asked from time to time why Stuart and I do what we do.
01:25:19Why do we care so much about giving back?
01:25:22Let me show you my recent art project to help explain.
01:25:31I took a virtual class in Memento Mori.
01:25:35It was an art class where you make things, mementos, to remind you that eventually you're
01:25:43going to die.
01:25:49There are pistachios and bottles of wine, halos and little Fiji water bottles and tiny
01:25:56pomegranates, all the things that have helped make my life, our lives truly wonderful.
01:26:08The important part is what's written at the bottom.
01:26:12Purses don't have luggage racks.
01:26:19But in these times of social unrest and agitation, there is more need than ever.
01:26:26And I believe if you can do more for the common good and you don't, you're committing a sin.
01:26:51But when you're in the middle of the night, you're going to die.
01:26:51You're going to die.
01:26:52You're going to die.
01:26:52You're going to die.
01:26:55I'm going to die.
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