(CNN) — The small rural town of Cibola, located in the Sonoran Desert near the Arizona-California border, is home to about 300 people, depending on the season.

Life here depends almost entirely on on the Colorado Rivernourishing Dry crops like cotton and alfalfamaintains nearby wildlife sanctuaries and allows visitors to enjoy boating and other recreational activities.

It’s a place few Americans seem to have heard of, and it was even more surprising when investment firm Greenstone Management Partners acquired it. About 500 acres of land here. On that website, green stone “The goal is to facilitate water trade that benefits both the public interest and the private sector.”

But critics have accused Greenstone, a subsidiary of East Coast financial services conglomerate MassMutual, of trying to profit from Cibola’s most precious and limited resource. waterof Arizona Colorado River water being cut In the midst of decades of great drought.

“These companies are not buying the land because they want to farm here and be part of the community, they are buying the land here for the water rights,” said Cibola. Holly Irwin, a resident and La Paz County district supervisor.

These water rights could soon benefit Queen Creek, Arizona, growing in a suburb of Phoenix about 200 miles away.Last September, the town Approved the transfer of the $27 million purchase The amount of water in the Colorado River from Greenstone’s property in Cibola. lawsuit La Paz, Mojave, and Yuma counties have sued the Federal Reclamation Service for authorizing the water transfer.

The Bureau of Reclamation referred all questions about the lawsuit to the Justice Department, which did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Justice Department attorneys argued in their court response to the county’s lawsuit that the reclamation’s environmental assessment “fully satisfies” the National Environmental Policy Act. We have demonstrated convincingly that migration has no significant impact on the environment. At best, the flow in his one leg of the Lower Colorado River is slightly reduced (less than half a year). “

After hearing arguments from county attorneys and Justice Department attorneys on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Michael Liburdi said he will rule on the case in late April.

“Greenstone makes millions at the expense of what it brings to our community in the future and the priorities it seeks to set,” said Irwin. We are experiencing an extreme drought and our communities need this water.At some point the state has a responsibility to protect the people here and protect our water and the metropolitan area. We do not address people buying property for water rights to benefit the

“The proposal has been recommended for approval by the Arizona Department of Water Resources after extensive hearings and comments,” Greenstone’s attorney, Grady Gammage, said in a statement to CNN. It does not affect the growth potential of the city.

“As property owners, my clients hold water rights,” Gammage said. “It’s the same for all riverside farmers who own land that has been irrigated for over 100 years in most cases. , Colorado River water can only be transferred after an extensive review process at both the state and federal levels.Proposed transfers will be independently analyzed.”

In neighboring Mojave County, supervisor Travis Lingenfelter described what he sees as a battle for the future of Colorado River communities, with many East Coast investment firms looking to join the action. Added.

“These companies are actually pretty savvy in that they go out west, buy cheap rural farmland, pick it up, sit there for a while, and then try to sell the water,” Lingenfelter said. said, “I don’t think they should be allowed to profit from Arizona’s finite resources…they’re the only source of water for many of our communities. If it’s aimed at us, we have to fight it.”

Arizona is not alone. East Coast companies have purchased thousands of acres of irrigation land in the southwest, a local official told CNN. New York-based investment firm Water Asset Management has become one of the biggest players in the space, with purchases in Arizona, California, Colorado and Nevada, and pending deals in New Mexico and Texas. .

Matt Diserio, president of Water Asset Management, called the water of the United States.$1 trillion market opportunity,” and Said he started a company “It is based on the belief that the scarce and clean water is the resource that will define this century, just as abundant, cheap and dirty oil defined the last century.”

Water Asset Management describes its mission online as “Investing in companies and assets that ensure water quality and availability.”

“Water Asset Management is proud to invest in productive agriculture and water in the American West,” COO Marc Robert told CNN via email. “In the face of record water scarcity on the Colorado River, we have volunteered to respond to urgent and repeated calls to conserve water. We will actively promote conservation.”

Andy Muller, general manager of the Colorado River District Water Authority, disagrees, describing Water Asset Management and other East Coast investment firms as “drought beneficiaries.”

“They are trying to suck the lifeblood out of these communities for their own economic gain,” Muller said.

Water Asset Management owns at least 3,000 acres in western Colorado’s Grand Valley, and Mueller works to protect some of Colorado’s rivers. He said it was difficult to track the full scale of land grabbing because investment firms use different names to disguise ownership.

“Water Asset Management has worked with various purchasing methods to keep the transaction unknown to many local jurisdictions,” said Mueller. “It’s a very unpopular move to come from New York and invest in irrigated agriculture and see it dried and blown.”

The investment firm did not respond to CNN’s questions about allegations that it was using names other than Water Asset Management to hide land ownership. A property search on the Mojave and Mesa counties of Colorado county rating agency websites found no results when searching for a property named Water Asset Management as the owner with CNN listed.

CNN found multiple properties in both counties under various names, including WPI Hulet Farm AZ LLC, WPI II-GV6 Farm CO LLC, and WPI-919 Farm AZ LLC. They all have mailing addresses that match the address of Water Asset Management’s corporate headquarters. in New York City.

under pilot programthe federal government paid $125 million in drought relief funds to Colorado River farmers and ranchers to let their land fallow and conserve water. Preparing additional funds For short fallow. Some worry that outside investment firms will benefit from such programs.

Kelly Donovan, an Eagle County, Colorado rancher, has tried to strengthen Colorado’s anti-speculation laws.State Senator. “These companies are not passionate about growing crops, they are passionate about making money. It’s a very different way of thinking about land management.”

Donovan now runs the 400-acre family-owned Copper Bar Ranch, where she raises Highland cattle with her husband and two dogs. Like other farmers and ranchers in the state, she worries about how Wall Street will affect their future.

“It’s not their land, it’s not their legacy. It’s their earnings,” Donovan said. “For me it’s personal because it’s my family’s land we’re fighting to protect…and that could be in jeopardy when New York comes to play .

“One day they will sell the water, meaning the land will disappear from agricultural production,” Donovan continued. “And they will sell when water is most valuable, which is when we have very little of it.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.