Corporations are consolidating water and land rights in the West
A Meat and Dairy Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Eli Francovich, TheCounter.org
January 2022

With farms, ranches and rural communities facing unprecedented threats, a worrying trend leads to a critical question: Who owns the water?

Those with the money get to determine how the rules are drawn up and whether they are enforced or not.

water rights
Graphic by Nicole Wilkinson

With farms, ranches and rural communities facing unprecedented threats, a worrying trend leads to a critical question: Who owns the water?

Ghost cattle — 200,000 made-up heifers. A massive fraud rocking eastern Washington’s arid ranching communities, leading to criminal charges and bankruptcy. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a Bill Gates-owned company duking it out at the auction block, each willing to spend more than $200 million to buy 22,500 acres of ranchland and its associated water rights.

These were just some of the headlines from this past summer when Cody Easterday of Mesa, Washington, pleaded guilty to defrauding Tyson Foods and another unnamed company of more than $244 million. He did so, according to court documents, by billing for the care of those imaginary animals.

After he pleaded guilty, the bidding war started. In June, the Church’s agricultural holding company beat out Gates’ 100C LLC, cementing the Latter-day Saints as one of the largest commercial agricultural landowners in the Western United States.

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE (PDF).

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