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https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/wall-street-investment-buying-land-us-west-water/1501347
Wall Street is thirsty for its next big investment opportunity: The West's vanishing water
Water Asset Management describes its mission online as "investing in companies and assets that ensure water quality and availability."
"Water Asset Management is proud of our investments in production agriculture and water in the American West," company COO Marc Robert told CNN via email. "In the face of record shortages on the Colorado River, we have voluntarily answered urgent and repeated calls to conserve water. Moreover, we will continue to manage our assets in a manner that contributes to solutions to water scarcity and work actively to promote conservation."
Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Colorado River District Water District, disagrees, describing Water Asset Management and other East Coast investment firms as "drought profiteers."
"They're trying to suck the very lifeblood out of these communities for their own financial benefit," Mueller said.
Water Asset Management owns at least 3,000 acres in Western Colorado's Grand Valley, where Mueller works to protect Colorado's share of the river. He said the full scale of the land grab is difficult to track because investment firms use different names to disguise ownership.
"Water Asset Management has engaged in a number of different purchase methods to keep their transactions unknown to many of the local jurisdictions," Mueller said. "It's a very unpopular move to come from New York and invest in irrigated agriculture with the intent to dry it up and watch it blow away."
The investment firm did not respond to CNN's question about allegations it hides its land ownership by using names other than Water Asset Management. In property searches on county assessor websites in Mohave County and Mesa County in Colorado, no results were found when CNN searched for properties with the name Water Asset Management as the listed owner.
CNN found multiple properties in both counties under various names, such as WPI Hulet Farm AZ LLC, WPI II-GV6 Farm CO LLC and WPI-919 Farm AZ LLC, all of which have a mailing address that match the address for Water Asset Management's headquarters in New York City.
