The (not so) Wonderful Company

The Wonderful Company is a privately held $5 billion enterprise. Stewart and wife Lynda Resnick's best known product is Fiji Water, then maybe POM pomegranate products. If you check their website or look for information, you'll find them to be quite socially and environmentally responsible. If only that were true.

They own Justin Winery in Paso Robles and Landmark in Sonoma County. They are in the news again because of their recent purchase of Robert Sinskey Vineyards in Napa.

The Resnicks of Beverly Hills
The king and queen of California water

 
The Resnick's empire uses more California water than the entire population of Los Angeles. In fact, they uses more water than anyone else in the West as the owner of 180,000 acres of California with an estimated 122,000 of those being irrigated. He grows mostly nut crops and they are thirsty trees. They also grow crops in Texas and Mexico.

Here are a few of the controversies surrounding the Wonderful Company:

2011. The Fiji government wanted to raise the taxes on the water taken from a fraction of a Fijian cent per liter to 15 cents. The company responded by laying off workers. The government tried again a couple years later, and the response was to close the plant. That didn't last long and the Resnicks agreed to pay the tax. At the time, less than half of the Fiji population had access to clean water.

2016. Justin Winery bulldozed and graded a hillside oak forest to plant a vineyard. Construction was stopped by the county after a news report on the illegal clear-cutting. The Resnicks promised to replant the hillside. I don't know the status of that project.

2018. Resnick fired a company director who was on maternity leave. She said Lynda Resnick became hostile towards her when she chose to have a child. Ex-coworkers corroborate the story. She sued and they went to private arbitration.

2020: They are in a fight with the U.S. Navy. The small town that houses the staff for the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake is in danger of losing its water supply to the Resnick's farming. Water that was found to be unsafe, probably because of earlier navy dumping, and is being cleaned up at taxpayer's expense, so the Resnicks can use it.

2022. The Resnicks sued Tulare County in the San Joaquin Valley because they had approved a local family to also grow pistachios in the county. Why? Because the new growers would be using "their" (the Resnicks) water. So far, the county judge has not been impressed.

2022. After complaints from female employees complaining about sexual discrimination at Justin Winery, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit. The company response was that many of the complainers asked for it. The case will go to federal court.

In their favor, the Resnicks have been giving money to universities to help with environmental concerns.