Erroneous accusations that a wealthy couple, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, have been hoarding water amid the Southern California wildfires have been spreading widely online.

The owners of Wonderful Co., behind Fiji Water and other brands, use a lot of water, but it's only a fraction of California’s usage. No one entity owns the water.

There are misconceptions circulating about who’s at fault for the fires burning tens of thousands of acres across Los Angeles.

Stewart and Lynda Resnick's net worth appears to have been built on some sort of water empire. Here's what we know about their wealth.

As the Eaton and Palisades fires consume California, social media users have reignited controversy over Lynda and Stewart Resnick, two married Los Angeles collectors who have a significant stake in the state's water.

Forbes' latest edition of its Fresh Take newsletter focuses on a misconception about water politics amid Los Angeles wildfires, Red Dye No. 3's ban and more.

Stewart and Lynda Resnick, an ultra-wealthy couple from California, are being accused of hoarding water when it is needed to fight the wildfires in California. The Resnicks own the Los Angeles-based Wonderful Company — which claims to be one of the largest food producers in the world.

As wildfires continue to burn in L.A., art collectors Lynda and Stewart Resnick face criticism for their ownership of a nearby water bank.

The couple’s company has a majority stake in a water bank in the San Joaquin Valley and uses vast amounts of water to manage its nearly 130,000-acre California agriculture operation. But the claim that the Resnicks own nearly all — or even a large portion — of California’s water is a massive exaggeration.

The most likely source of these hoarding rumors is that the Resnicks own the Westside Mutual Water Company. That company has a 57% stake in the Kern Groundwater Bank Authority, which operates the Kern Water Bank, a vast stretch of land that can hold up to 1 million acre feet of groundwater.

A billionaire couple was accused of withholding water that could help stop Los Angeles’ massive wildfires. Democratic leadership was blamed for fire hydrants running dry and for an empty reservoir. Firefighters were criticized for allegedly using “women’s handbags” to fight the fires.

Since the beginning of the January 2025 fires around Los Angeles, claims circulated that one billionaire couple owned "most of California's water," with some people implying they were hoarding it from firefighting efforts.