Chuck Darwin‘Water is more valuable than oil’:
Corporations cashing in on America’s drought
One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the west’s smallest rural enclaves:
Tucked into the bends of the lower Colorado River, Cibola, Arizona, is a community of about 200 people. Maybe 300, if you count the weekenders who come to boat and hunt.
Nearly a decade ago, 💥Greenstone Resource Partners LLC, 💥
a private company backed by global investors,
bought almost 500 acres of agricultural land here in Cibola.
In a first-of-its-kind deal,
👉the company recently sold the water rights tied to the land to the town of Queen Creek,
a suburb of Phoenix, for a $14m gross profit.
More than 2,000 acre-feet of water from the Colorado River that was once used to irrigate farmland is now flowing, through a canal system, to the taps of homes more than 200 miles away.
Greenstone strategically purchased land and influence to advance the deal. -- The company was able to do so by exploiting the arcane water policies governing the Colorado River.
Experts expect that such transfers will become more common as thirsty towns across the west seek increasingly scarce water.
The climate crisis and chronic overuse have sapped the Colorado River watershed,
leaving cities and farmers alike to contend with shortages.
Amid a deepening drought and declines in the river’s reservoirs,
Greenstone and firms like it have been discreetly acquiring thousands of acres of farmland
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