To boil it down to a single set of bullet points, a group of billionaire investors

secretly bought up enough low–cost agricultural land to build a city that will make them obscenely richer when they sell and lease the resulting residential and commercial properties

used their ownership of parcels of land badly needed by the county to try to leverage the county into granting them the necessary permits and zoning changes

attempted to get the country to cover some of the cost to build pipes to supply water to the city they will profit from building

obtained the rights to that water by buying it from farmers who’ve had the market for their crops crash

and then, despite riling up county officials and local voters with their actions, tried to sell their project as a wonderfully generous social and environmental endeavor.