Harvard — Hands Off California’s Water

While fires burned in Los Angeles this winter, accelerated by drought and global heating, water continued to be extracted from Harvard-owned lands.

Just 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles, in California’s Cuyama Valley, an exploratory oil drilling project is moving forward on Harvard’s 6,565-acre vineyard.

This project is the latest in a series of Harvard’s grabs on natural resources in the region that have worsened a critical drought of groundwater and endangered the area’s many local farmers and ranchers. To repair these harms, the University must, to the extent that it is able, put an end to extractive groundwater pumping and oil drilling in the area and instead invest in building sustainable agricultural practices that prioritize — rather than threaten — a human right to water.

75 years of over-pumping by agricultural companies has devastated Cuyama Valley’s groundwater basin. As a result, California has classified the basin as having a “critical overdraft,” where water has been depleted faster than it can be replenished.

Given local farmers and ranchers' struggles to stay afloat, the region shouldn’t have been an investment hotbed. So, when a firm called Brodiaea Inc. purchased agricultural land with healthy groundwater deposits at an above-market rate, farmers were shocked.

It wasn’t until 2014 that residents learned the real buyer was Harvard University. From 2012 to 2018, Harvard purchased thousands of acres of arable land across California. Of these holdings, North Fork Ranch, acquired through the subsidiary company Brodiaea Inc., has been the subject of particular controversy.

The land, historically a dry rangeland, was transformed in a water-intensive process by Harvard into the largest vineyard in the valley. 16 water wells were drilled by the University on the property — one so deep it would allow water to be continually drawn as the current drought worsens.

Since 2017, Brodiaea has proposed building three massive water-storage reservoirs on the vineyard to protect against frost, each able to hold 45 acre-feet of water — about 22 times the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Farmers and community members protested the proposal, and the Santa Barbara Planning Commission ruled that the reservoirs would exacerbate the already critical overdraft of the area’s groundwater. The project was voted down.

While small farmers and ranchers have struggled to decrease their relatively small groundwater pumping to comply with local water conservation policies, Harvard’s aggressive claims on water seem to be an attempt to evade such limits — with huge implications for the future of water security in the region.

As Harvard’s grapes grew, accusations of a more sinister motive began to take root. Nearby vineyard owners and farmers noted Harvard’s investments, if purely intended to grow and sell grapes, would not make economic sense. Instead, they alleged the University’s vineyards are an investment in water, and that Harvard is instead seeking to profit off of the region’s worsening drought.

In 2018, a member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers, Kathryn “Kat” A. Taylor ’80 resigned in protest of the endowment’s unsustainable investments. Among her complaints, she cited “water holdings that threaten the human right to water.” As climate change and local droughts accelerate, such claims have and will become increasingly lucrative.

Regardless of whether Harvard’s vineyards are a front for water speculation, they pose a serious threat to the valley’s water supply and local communities already made vulnerable by large agricultural companies and climate change-induced drought. One of the biggest water users in the valley, Harvard’s greed jeopardizes any gains made by conservation policies that have forced locals to reduce groundwater pumping.

Harvard’s continued ownership of the North Fork Ranch property compels a reexamination of the University’s declared sustainability mission to “accelerate the adoption of systems and practices that protect the climate and environment.”

Just last year, West Bay Exploration Co., Michigan’s largest oil producer, was approved to drill a test oil and gas well on North Fork Ranch. Beyond the fact that the drilling could threaten local ecosystems with the spread of arsenic, opponents also highlighted the project’s support for the fossil fuel industry, complicating not only the University’s proclaimed commitments to sustainability but also its 2021 pledge to divest from fossil fuels. Even if the University has limited involvement with the management of the property, ownership of such a property is at odds with Harvard’s stated values.

As fires rage across California, Harvard must make good on its commitments to sustainability and shift away from investments in natural resources that threaten local communities and the planet.

First, Harvard should insist upon both an end to over-pumping of Cuyama Valley’s already overdrafted groundwater and the acceptance of groundwater limitations already adopted by Cuyama’s farmers.

The University must also urge the end of West Bay Exploration Co.’s lease following the exploratory drilling stage and the public release of any information gathered during drilling about groundwater levels that could help to inform future water conservation policy for the valley. If such action falls short, Harvard should divest fully from the property.

In paying lip service to the climate while siphoning scarce water from the earth, our University has demonstrated its commitment to profit. It’s time to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability instead — the future of Cuyama Valley’s residents and water hangs in the balance.

Kayla P.S. Springer ’26 is a Social Studies concentrator in Pforzheimer House and an organizer with Stop Harvard Land Grabs.