Water rights
Water rights was one of the topics at the conference I attended last week. The rights to water ownership, if it's been upheld in court, is valuable on the water scarce West Coast of the States but not so much on the wetter East Coast until recently when excessive development together with climate cange have made people more aware of the issue. One man who's taken the idea to heart is T.Boone Pickens. He's been accumulating a great deal of land over the aquifer in northern Texas, hoping that he will one day own the rights and be able to pump it down to Dallas.
posted by Whispering Walls at 8:06 am
11 Comments:
... and he's the man who famously said that the oil in the oil companies was much cheaper than the oil in the ground - hence his buying of oil companie 20 odd years ago at massive discounts.
Not another Texan...
T Boone Pickens, is he mad, bad or just dangerous to know? Whilst no doubt a very astute man in his hay day I fear his now eccentric with plans such as the worlds largest wind farm with close to 3000 turbines covering 200,000 acres. Don’t get me wrong I am green and keen to find a future for out energy needs but 3000 turbines?!!! Anyway onto his plans to buys the subsurface water rights from the Ogallala Aquifer – considering it currently waters one fifth of US irrigated land is our man Pickens just moving the water problem elsewhere? That is enough serious thought for one day ….
You see, KL, maybe water is the cutting edge.
Yes ED - more Texan T-Bones
Pumping water to Dallas, hey. I think I remember mentioning to you before that water scarcity will one day make water the next oil.
there is a great article about this guy in the paper today, and his plans to build yet more wind farms and solar panel sites all across the US of A...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/14/windpower.energy
He is going to start a trend, that is for sure... You don't spend $ 10 billion on something without being pretty sure it is going to earn a return...
Don't get me started on this - I still can't believe that governments (no, the people) don't own the utilities that they rely on to keep life rolling as it should. A profit from water? It's as outrageous as a profit from oil......
Hi Anon and WM - thank you for pointing out that article.
Morning Mopsa - many people would agree with you but when you see the water pollution caused by factories in eg China, you may feel happy about paying for companies to filter it so that it's clean again.
ww - are you taking the proverbial ?
Surely 'the polluter pays' should be the principle ! Or are you advocating that private business should get the benefit of polluting, while the poor have to pay for clean drinking water from, er, a privatised utility !?
Hi Anon - that theory's fine in a developed country but doesn't work in practice in China where the people usually end up paying for pollution, either through water charges or tax. It amounts to the same thing in the end as much of the water is provided by state owned municipalities (who usually have to outsource water purification to private companies)
Oh, I should have been there!
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