By Carolee Krieger, C-WIN Executive Director
Water policy is convoluted, difficult to parse, and usually proceeds incrementally. But sometimes things happen that dramatically alter the legal and regulatory landscapes. It can be a court ruling, such as the 1983 National Audubon v Superior Court decision, which established limits on the amount of water the City of Los Angeles can take from Mono Lake. Or it can be legislation such as the 1992 Central Valley Improvement Act, which mandated changes in the federal Central Valley Project for the protection and revitalization of fisheries and wildlife habitat.
Or it can be something that occurs with little attendant public awareness, but which has profound impacts on the way water is allocated and used. The Monterey Amendments are the prime case in point.
In 1994, four of the largest State Water Project (SWP) contractors met in Monterey in a closed meeting with officials from the California Department of Water Resources. Their goal: rewriting the SWP allocation contracts to benefit Stewart Resnick, a billionaire agricultural baron, and Southern California developers. Any amendments to these contracts should have been conducted in a fully transparent public process. But public representatives were excluded from these sub rosa sessions, and Californians have been enduring the dire consequences ever since.
Over several days of negotiations, the participating contractors—including Resnick’s representative—were able to arrogate the lion’s share of California’s developed water, stripping it from public control. Formalized as The Monterey Agreement – Statement of Principles, the accord is now commonly known as the Monterey Amendments. The deals worked out in Monterey have been disastrous for California citizens. Here’s a shorthand take on their main tenets:
• Authorizes “Paper Water”
Through legal sleight of hand, the Monterey Amendments allow state contractors to effectively sell water that doesn’t exist. The state has allocated 5.3 times more water than is available in the state and federal water delivery systems. Nevertheless, this “paper water” – water that exists in legal documents but not in rivers, reservoirs or aquifers – can be transferred by SWP contractors for enormous profit. As a result, enormous volumes of water have been diverted from the Sacramento-San Joaquin watershed to San Joaquin Valley agriculture and Southern California cities, leaving insufficient quantities for fish & wildlife.
• Elimination of the urban preference rule
Prior to the adoption of the amendments, state water policy was governed by the urban preference rule, which prioritized the needs of urban ratepayers during droughts. By negating the urban preference, agribusiness functionally supersedes cities during drought emergencies. This means corporate farmers in the San Joaquin Valley may receive large allocations of water to irrigate almond orchards for the international export market regardless of whether there is adequate supply for urban needs. In addition, environmental flow needs are subverted to agricultural demand, decimating fish populations, benefitting invasive species, and increasing harmful algal blooms.
• Transfer of control of the Kern Water Bank from the public trust to Stewart Resnick’s business empire.
During the 1980s, the State of California spent $74 million—about $220 million in 2025 dollars—to develop a massive subterranean water reserve in Kern County as an emergency source for urban ratepayers during drought. Holding up to a million acre-feet of water, an amount nearly equal to the annual urban use of 19 million Southern California ratepayers, the Kern Water Bank consists of an aquifer complex that can be exploited as required and easily recharged with water from the SWP. But under the sweetheart deal concocted in Monterey, the purpose of this critical public resource was abruptly changed from ensuring ratepayer water security to providing Stewart Resnick’s Wonderful Company subsidiary (Paramount Farms) with water for export and luxury crops such as almonds, pistachios and pomegranates. Paramount Farms controls 58% of the Kern Water Bank and has used this share to profit during drought periods by selling water to urban water districts at a premium.
• Increases threats to the environment and communities of the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta
Overall, the Monterey Amendments make it easier to increase Delta water exports, assuring accelerated destruction of the richest estuary in the western continental United States.
Tribes, communities, and hundreds of family farms in the Delta region rely on ample freshwater flows through the estuary to prosper; thanks to the Monterey Amendments, water can be easily diverted out of the Delta to the sprawling industrial croplands of the San Joaquin Valley. The Amendments have also been catastrophic for California’s once mighty salmon runs. Most of the state’s Chinook salmon pass through the Delta. While the runs dwindled through the 20th Century, they were still relatively robust prior to the adoption of the Amendments. Since then, their numbers have crashed spectacularly in lockstep with the increased Delta exports the Amendments allow.
To a very real degree, California’s water crisis can be traced back to that fateful and secret meeting on the Monterey Peninsula more than 30 years ago, when Stewart Resnick, the Kern County Water Agency, and the Metropolitan Water District wrested control of California’s water from the public trust. We can’t undo the damage that has occurred over the past three decades – but we can rectify the base injustice and build a better future for ratepayers, the communities and family farmers of the Delta, and our beleaguered fisheries. We must overturn the Monterey Amendments.
C-WIN: The secret meeting that privatized public water supplies
By Carolee Krieger, C-WIN Executive Director
Or it can be something that occurs with little attendant public awareness, but which has profound impacts on the way water is allocated and used. The Monterey Amendments are the prime case in point.
In 1994, four of the largest State Water Project (SWP) contractors met in Monterey in a closed meeting with officials from the California Department of Water Resources. Their goal: rewriting the SWP allocation contracts to benefit Stewart Resnick, a billionaire agricultural baron, and Southern California developers. Any amendments to these contracts should have been conducted in a fully transparent public process. But public representatives were excluded from these sub rosa sessions, and Californians have been enduring the dire consequences ever since.
Over several days of negotiations, the participating contractors—including Resnick’s representative—were able to arrogate the lion’s share of California’s developed water, stripping it from public control. Formalized as The Monterey Agreement – Statement of Principles, the accord is now commonly known as the Monterey Amendments. The deals worked out in Monterey have been disastrous for California citizens. Here’s a shorthand take on their main tenets:
• Authorizes “Paper Water”
Through legal sleight of hand, the Monterey Amendments allow state contractors to effectively sell water that doesn’t exist. The state has allocated 5.3 times more water than is available in the state and federal water delivery systems. Nevertheless, this “paper water” – water that exists in legal documents but not in rivers, reservoirs or aquifers – can be transferred by SWP contractors for enormous profit. As a result, enormous volumes of water have been diverted from the Sacramento-San Joaquin watershed to San Joaquin Valley agriculture and Southern California cities, leaving insufficient quantities for fish & wildlife.
• Elimination of the urban preference rule
Prior to the adoption of the amendments, state water policy was governed by the urban preference rule, which prioritized the needs of urban ratepayers during droughts. By negating the urban preference, agribusiness functionally supersedes cities during drought emergencies. This means corporate farmers in the San Joaquin Valley may receive large allocations of water to irrigate almond orchards for the international export market regardless of whether there is adequate supply for urban needs. In addition, environmental flow needs are subverted to agricultural demand, decimating fish populations, benefitting invasive species, and increasing harmful algal blooms.
• Transfer of control of the Kern Water Bank from the public trust to Stewart Resnick’s business empire.
During the 1980s, the State of California spent $74 million—about $220 million in 2025 dollars—to develop a massive subterranean water reserve in Kern County as an emergency source for urban ratepayers during drought. Holding up to a million acre-feet of water, an amount nearly equal to the annual urban use of 19 million Southern California ratepayers, the Kern Water Bank consists of an aquifer complex that can be exploited as required and easily recharged with water from the SWP. But under the sweetheart deal concocted in Monterey, the purpose of this critical public resource was abruptly changed from ensuring ratepayer water security to providing Stewart Resnick’s Wonderful Company subsidiary (Paramount Farms) with water for export and luxury crops such as almonds, pistachios and pomegranates. Paramount Farms controls 58% of the Kern Water Bank and has used this share to profit during drought periods by selling water to urban water districts at a premium.
• Increases threats to the environment and communities of the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta
Overall, the Monterey Amendments make it easier to increase Delta water exports, assuring accelerated destruction of the richest estuary in the western continental United States.
Tribes, communities, and hundreds of family farms in the Delta region rely on ample freshwater flows through the estuary to prosper; thanks to the Monterey Amendments, water can be easily diverted out of the Delta to the sprawling industrial croplands of the San Joaquin Valley. The Amendments have also been catastrophic for California’s once mighty salmon runs. Most of the state’s Chinook salmon pass through the Delta. While the runs dwindled through the 20th Century, they were still relatively robust prior to the adoption of the Amendments. Since then, their numbers have crashed spectacularly in lockstep with the increased Delta exports the Amendments allow.
To a very real degree, California’s water crisis can be traced back to that fateful and secret meeting on the Monterey Peninsula more than 30 years ago, when Stewart Resnick, the Kern County Water Agency, and the Metropolitan Water District wrested control of California’s water from the public trust. We can’t undo the damage that has occurred over the past three decades – but we can rectify the base injustice and build a better future for ratepayers, the communities and family farmers of the Delta, and our beleaguered fisheries. We must overturn the Monterey Amendments.
Tags