When Marina Zenovich’s documentary Water and Power: A California Heist hit the Sundance circuit back in 2017, people sort of expected a dry, policy-heavy lecture about infrastructure. Instead, they got a noir thriller. It turns out that the history of California isn't just about Hollywood or tech startups; it’s a story of a few very wealthy people moving around massive amounts of water while everyone else was looking the other way.
Water is everything in the West. Without it, you’ve got dust.
The film basically exposes how a small group of powerful landowners and corporations exploited a loophole in the state’s water system. They essentially privatized a public resource during one of the worst droughts in modern history. If you live in California, or even if you just eat almonds and pistachios from the Central Valley, you’re connected to this. It’s not just "history." It’s ongoing.
What Water and Power: A California Heist actually uncovered
The documentary focuses heavily on the Kern County Water Bank. To understand why this is a "heist," you have to look at the Monterey Plus Agreement. Back in 1994, a group of water officials and big-time agricultural players met in secret at a hotel in Monterey. They weren't just grabbing lunch. They were rewriting the rules of how the State Water Project—a massive, taxpayer-funded system—distributed its flow.
Before this meeting, there was a "drought clause." It basically said that if water got scarce, big farms took the first hit so that cities (where most of the people live) wouldn't go dry. The Monterey Agreement flipped that. It deleted the drought clause.
But the real kicker was the transfer of the Kern County Water Bank. This was a state-owned underground storage facility. Through some truly Byzantine legal maneuvering, it was handed over to a group of private interests. Chief among them? The Wonderful Company, owned by billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick.
The Resnick Factor
You’ve seen their products. Pom Wonderful. Halo mandarins. Fiji Water. They are marketing geniuses, honestly. But Water and Power: A California Heist paints a much more complicated picture of their business model.
The Resnicks didn't do anything illegal in the traditional "breaking and entering" sense. They used the system. By controlling the Kern Water Bank, they could store water when it was cheap and plenty, then use it to keep their permanent crops—like almond trees that can't be left to fallow—alive during droughts that killed off smaller family farms.
It’s a brutal efficiency. Small farmers who couldn't afford to dig deeper wells or buy expensive water on the open market simply went bust. Meanwhile, the Resnicks' empire grew.
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Why the "Heist" label actually fits
Critics of the film sometimes argue that "heist" is too strong a word. They say it was just smart business and complex water law. But when you look at the human cost in places like Fairmead or East Porterville, it’s hard to call it anything else.
In these towns, the taps literally ran dry.
While big industrial farms were pumping massive amounts of groundwater to keep orchards green, the water table dropped so low that residential wells failed. People were living off bottled water for years. It’s a stark visual: lush, green groves of nut trees on one side of the road, and a family that can’t flush their toilet on the other.
That’s the core of the documentary's argument. The "heist" wasn't just about stealing gallons; it was about stealing the future of rural communities to subsidize industrial agriculture.
The legal gymnastics of the Monterey Agreement
The Monterey Agreement was challenged in court for years. Activists like Carolee Krieger and organizations like the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) fought tooth and nail to prove the environmental impact reports were insufficient. They won some rounds. They lost others.
The complexity is the shield.
Water law in California is a mess of "senior rights," "junior rights," and "riparian rights" that date back to the gold rush. Most people don’t have the time or the JD degree to understand why a billionaire in Beverly Hills owns more water than a town in the San Joaquin Valley. The documentary does a pretty solid job of breaking down that complexity without making your eyes bleed, which is a feat in itself.
Groundwater: The invisible frontier
While the Monterey Agreement handled the surface water, the "heist" extends underground. For nearly a century, California was the "Wild West" of groundwater. If you could afford to drill a hole, the water underneath your land was yours.
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The documentary highlights how this led to a "race to the bottom."
- Big players buy land.
- They install massive, high-powered pumps.
- They suck out water from deep aquifers.
- The water table drops.
- Shallow wells belonging to neighbors go dry.
This isn't just a theory. In some parts of the Central Valley, the ground is actually sinking. It’s called subsidence. The land has dropped by dozens of feet in some areas because so much water has been sucked out that the soil is collapsing in on itself. Once that happens, you can't "refill" the aquifer. That storage space is gone forever.
The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)
Since the film came out, California passed SGMA. It’s supposed to fix this. But—and this is a big "but"—the timelines for compliance are decades long. Many activists argue it’s too little, too late. The "heist" described in the film set a precedent that current laws are still struggling to walk back.
Misconceptions about California's water crisis
One thing people get wrong is thinking this is a "Northern California vs. Southern California" issue. It’s not. It’s an "Urban and Small Farm vs. Industrial Ag" issue.
Most people in Los Angeles or San Francisco aren't the ones "stealing" the water. In fact, urban water use has dropped significantly over the last twenty years. The vast majority of the state’s managed water—roughly 80%—goes to agriculture. And within that 80%, a huge chunk goes to thirsty permanent crops destined for export.
We are essentially exporting California’s water to China and Europe in the form of almonds.
Nuance and the other side of the story
To be fair, the Resnicks and other big players argue they provide jobs. They do. They argue they are the most efficient users of water because they use drip irrigation. They are. They also point out that the Monterey Agreement was necessary to stabilize a system that was financially failing.
But the film asks: at what cost?
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If the price of a stable water system is the death of small towns and the exhaustion of ancient aquifers, is it a system worth having? Water and Power: A California Heist doesn't think so. It views the "public trust" as something that should never have been on the negotiating table in a Monterey hotel room.
Actionable steps for the concerned Californian
If you watched the film and felt a bit sick, you’re not alone. The water system is massive, but it’s not untouchable. Change usually happens at the local and state level through incredibly boring meetings that nobody attends.
Track your local GSA. Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) are currently deciding who gets to pump what. These are local boards. Most people don't know they exist, but they have more power over your local environment than almost any other body. Find out who sits on yours.
Support transparency in water rights. California is one of the few states that doesn't fully track exactly how much water every single user is taking. Support legislation that demands universal metering and reporting. You can't manage what you don't measure.
Diversify your diet. This sounds small, but the market drives the pumps. The shift to permanent crops (trees) instead of row crops (vegetables) is what made the water system so rigid. A tomato farmer can choose not to plant during a drought. An almond farmer doesn't have that choice; if they don't water, the trees die and they lose millions. Reducing the demand for water-intensive exports puts pressure on the system to diversify.
Engage with the State Water Resources Control Board. They hold public comment periods on water quality and flow requirements. It’s dense, but these are the people who actually have the power to enforce the "public trust" doctrine that the documentary talks about.
The story told in Water and Power: A California Heist isn't over. The players have changed slightly, and some new laws are on the books, but the underlying tension remains. As long as water is treated as a commodity rather than a right, the risk of the next "heist" is always just one dry winter away.