How One Corporation Is Cashing In on America’s Drought

On its website, Greenstone describes itself arsenic “a h2o company” and arsenic “a developer and proprietor of reliable, sustainable h2o supplies.” Its CEO, Mike Schlehuber, antecedently worked for Vidler Water Company—another steadfast that fundamentally brokers h2o supply—as good arsenic Summit Global Management, a institution that invests successful h2o suppliers and h2o rights. Greenstone’s managing manager and vice-president, Mike Malano—a erstwhile realtor based successful Phoenix who remains “active successful the Arizona improvement community,” per his institution bio—got himself elected to the committee of the Cibola vale irrigation and drainage district, a quasi-governmental enactment that oversees the organisation of h2o for agriculture successful the region.

Irwin was horrified. She felt that a institution with ties to large banks and existent property developers, posing arsenic a farm, had infiltrated her tiny municipality and sold disconnected its astir precious resource.

The woody won’t person an contiguous interaction connected Cibola’s residents. It doesn’t impact the municipal h2o supply. But she worries that the transportation volition beryllium the archetypal of many. And if much and much farms are fallowed to provender h2o to cities, what volition go of agrarian towns on the river?

“It’ll beryllium similar Owens Valley,” she said, referring to the h2o drawback that inspired the movie Chinatown. In the aboriginal 20th century, agents moving for the metropolis of Los Angeles, posing arsenic farmers oregon ranchers, bought up onshore successful the vale and diverted its h2o to prolong their metropolis, leaving down a dustbowl.

By allowing the Greenstone woody to spell through, “I’m acrophobic we’ve opened Pandora’s box,” she said.

The Colorado River, which stretches from the Rocky Mountains into Mexico, has declined by astir 20 percent since the crook of the century, amid the astir terrible drought the West has seen successful 1,200 years. In a painfully negotiated deal, Arizona, Nevada, and California agreed to reduce the magnitude of h2o they gully from the stream by 13 percent done 2026. Experts warned that adjacent deeper cuts would beryllium indispensable successful the coming decade, but states are presently deadlocked implicit a longer-term conservation plan.

“With ongoing shortages connected the river, driven by clime change, Colorado River h2o is going to go precise valuable,” said Rhett Larson, a prof of h2o instrumentality astatine Arizona State University. “Anyone who understands this dynamic thinks, ‘Well, if I could bargain Colorado River h2o rights, that’s much invaluable than owning lipid successful this state astatine this stage.’”

Though the terms Queen Creek paid for the h2o was remarkable—amounting to much than $11,500 per acre-foot—lawyers and h2o experts successful Arizona told the Guardian it would astir apt merchantability for adjacent much today.

The process of selling and transferring the water, however, tin beryllium bureaucratic and complicated. In astir cases, a institution similar Greenstone would person to archetypal person chap landowners successful their section irrigation territory to let the sale, and past unafraid approvals from the authorities section of h2o resources and the US Bureau of Reclamation, the national bureau that manages h2o successful the West.

What Irwin and galore of Cibola’s residents didn’t recognize was that successful their sleepy, riverside town, a prime radical of farmers and landowners had been moving for years to facilitate specified deals.

‘His Dream Was to Sell This Water’

Irrigation districts, arsenic the sanction suggests, are designed to administer h2o for irrigation crossed the US West. These districts were formed successful the 19th and 20th centuries arsenic cooperatives, allowing farmers to excavation resources to make h2o infrastructure. In the Colorado River basin, the districts declaration with the Bureau of Reclamation to present h2o flowing done national infrastructure to farms and ranches.

Farmers thin to beryllium possessive of their precious water, explained Susanna Eden of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center. Most irrigation districts are acceptable up to keep h2o for farming—and to support it within their jurisdictions.