Wall Street Is Buying Up Water and Leaving Towns Dry

I am writing to urge you to protect our communities from a growing and dangerous trend: investment firms buying up water rights and municipal infrastructure to turn a basic human necessity into a profitable, speculative asset. This isn't hypothetical. A Phoenix investment firm called Greenstone Resource Partners bought farmland a decade ago in Cibola, Arizona—a town of about 200 people—then sold the water rights tied to that land to a wealthy Phoenix suburb 200 miles away for a $14 million profit. The farmland was left permanently dry. La Paz County and two neighboring counties sued the federal government over the deal, and a judge agreed the approval process failed to account for the damage. Local officials warn it is only the beginning: the same firm holds over a thousand more acres nearby, and similar water-investment firms are pursuing deals like it across the West. This Cibola transfer is not an isolated incident. Across drought-prone western watersheds, private equity firms and hedge funds are systematically acquiring agricultural land specifically for the water rights attached to it—not to farm long-term, but to position themselves to sell that water to the highest bidder once scarcity drives up the price. At the same time, major corporations are partnering with private equity to financialize, bottle, and control regional water supplies. When essential resources are treated as speculative financial assets, local families, farmers, and small businesses pay the price through skyrocketing utility rates and artificial scarcity. Clean, accessible drinking water is a basic necessity for life, not a commodity to be squeezed for short-term profit by investors who will never live with the consequences. I urge you to support legislation that: 1. Restricts or prohibits private equity firms and hedge funds from purchasing public water rights, groundwater basins, and municipal water utilities for speculative resale. 2. Closes loopholes in U.S. Bureau of Reclamation policy to prevent out-of-basin transfers of agricultural water rights off regional watersheds. 3. Increases federal oversight and transparency for institutional investors trading water rights and water-linked assets as financial commodities. Please put public health, community stability, and water security ahead of Wall Street profits.