PICO Holdings - Water Resource and Water Storage Operations

WATER RESOURCE AND
WATER STORAGE
OPERATIONS

REAL ESTATE
OPERATIONS

AGRIBUSINESS
OPERATIONS

Our Water Resource and Water Storage Operations are conducted primarily through our subsidiary, Vidler Water Company, and its subsidiaries.

Vidler is a privately-owned company in the water resource development business. We develop new sources of water primarily in the southwestern United States for municipal and industrial use, either from existing supplies of water, such as water used for agricultural purposes, or from acquiring unappropriated (that is, previously unused) water. We also develop water storage infrastructure to facilitate the efficient allocation of available water supplies. Vidler is not a water utility, and does not currently intend to enter into regulated utility activities.

The inefficient allocation of available water between agricultural users and municipal or industrial users, or the lack of available known water supply in a particular location, or inadequate infrastructure to fully utilize existing and new water supplies, provide opportunities for Vidler because:

the majority of water rights are currently owned or controlled by agricultural users, and in many locations there are insufficient water rights owned or controlled by municipal and industrial users to meet present and future demand;
certain areas of the Southwest experiencing rapid growth have insufficient known supplies of water to support future growth. Vidler identifies and develops new water supplies for communities with no other known water resources to support future community growth; and
infrastructure to recharge water will be required to store supplies during times of surplus to enable transfers from stored supplies in years where there is either no surplus or no other water sources are available (e.g., in drought conditions).

Vidler is engaged in the following activities:

development of water resources for end-users in the Southwest, namely water utilities, municipalities, developers, or industrial users. Typically, we identify and develop the source of water from a new water supply, or a change in the use of an existing water supply from agricultural to municipal and industrial; and
construction and development of water storage facilities for resale in future periods, and distribution infrastructure to more efficiently use existing and new supplies of water.

Vidler generates revenues by:

selling or leasing its developed water resources to real estate developers or industrial users who must secure an assured supply of water in order to receive permits for their projects; and
storing water at its water storage facilities in Arizona and California from currently available surplus supplies, and then selling the stored water in future years to developers or municipalities that have either exhausted their existing water supplies, or in instances where our water represents the most economical source of water for their developments or communities.

Vidler Management

Dorothy Timian-Palmer, President and Chief Operating Officer of Vidler Water Company, Inc.

Ms. Timian-Palmer has 25 years of experience within the water resources field including both agricultural and municipal water management. During the past five years of her engineering career she held the position of Utilities Director for Carson City, Nevada, one of the fastest growth areas in the west. Under her leadership, water management programs such as groundwater recharge, conjunctive use management, and wastewater reuse were implemented. She has extensive experience in water rights acquisition, rate making theory, water production and storage, water treatment, and supply distribution. She holds State of Nevada licenses for both Professional Civil Engineering and Water Right Surveying.

Stephen Hartman, Executive Vice President – Corporate Development and Corporate Counsel of Vidler Water Company, Inc.

Mr. Hartman served as a law clerk to Nevada Supreme Court Justice Cameron Batjer and later entered private law practice concentrating in the real estate field for over 25 years. He has been involved in the area of governmental relations and land use planning involving a multitude of jurisdictions and projects over his career. He served 12 years as a member of the Nevada Board of Bar Examiners, and is a former Chairman of the Carson City Redevelopment Agency and of the Carson City Open Space Advisory Committee.

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