The Wonderful Company and its owners, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, are facing social media attacks of hoarding water in California, contributing to the destruction of the wildfires in the Los Angeles area over the past week.
Sunday, the company strongly pushed back on the claims.
Driving the news: Fires throughout the Los Angeles Area have resulted in a death toll of at least 24 people, with evacuation orders in effect for over 90,000 Los Angeles residents.
- Around 40,000 acres have been devastated by the fires, while over 12,000 structures have been destroyed.
By the numbers: Wonderful is among largest farming outfits in the United States, with holdings that include 130,000 acres of farmland in California and $6 billion in annual revenue, largely through pistachios, almonds and pomegranates.
- Fortune reported that The Wonderful Company uses around 150 billion gallons of water, which is less than 1% of California’s total water.
- The California Department of Water Resources reported that California’s reservoirs had 23.9 million acre-feet of water at the end of the 2023-2024 water year. That translates to nearly eight trillion gallons of water.
- California’s groundwater total is also estimated to be around 850 million acre-feet to 1.3 billion acre-feet.
What they’re saying: “It’s hard to be surprised anymore by the disinformation and ignorance on social media, but in this case, the hamster wheel has spun to a new level of absurdity,” Seth Oster, the chief corporate affairs officer for Wonderful, told Fortune.
- “We’re headquartered in Los Angeles and our colleagues have also lost homes and been displaced,” he added. “But even in the chaos and uncertainty, no one should be allowed to spread uninformed, discredited, and false claims often openly rooted in anti-Semitism.”
