Precious drops

Sac Bee ^ | 8/19/02 | Stuart Leavenworth and Dale Kasler

[NormsRevenge]

Rancher Rob Blair, whose family has grazed cattle in the Mojave Desert for more than a century, fears the Cadiz Inc. plan will deplete the water supply.

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE -- In the poker game of private water marketing, Keith Brackpool seems to hold all the aces.

[NormsRevenge]

DUMP DAVI$ & the Den of Socialists



GO SIMON

[NormsRevenge]

One of Davi$'s Cronies... Brackpool

He's also served as Davis' unofficial water adviser -- a relationship that critics say is too cozy for comfort.

Brackpool declined to be interviewed, but other Cadiz officials say his relationship with Davis has nothing to do with his business ventures.

DUMP DAVI$ & the Den of Socialists



GO SIMON

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

calgov2002:

calgov2002: for old calgov2002 articles. 

calgov2002: for new calgov2002 articles. 

Other Bump Lists at: Free Republic Bump List Register

[RonF]

"Cadiz officials say their project is crucial for Southern California to survive future water shortfalls, but Gastelum said there are other options. Currently, the district is studying three alternate sites to store water from the Colorado River.

'There are always Plan B's,' said Gastelum."

I live in the Chicago area. It gets pretty cold up here sometimes. This leads to some pretty expensive winters, having to buy all that natural gas or electricity to heat my house. If the price of gas goes up, I have to pay or freeze. Plan B is to move to Florida or Arizona, and if you don't believe that, go to Tampa or Phoenix and ask what the word "snowbirds" means. Those places are full of ex-Chicagoans. Hell, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play the Chicago Bears at home, sometimes there's as many Bears fans as Bucs fans in the stands.

So, what I'd suggest if lack of water is squeezing off growth in a particular area is for those people who can't afford it to move to somewhere that has cheap water, not for some corporation to get a sweetheart deal to pump out a restricted resource and screw up an aquifer.

[Chemnitz]

Well put. I moved from southern Minnesota to Phoenix. The water rates are fair here. My worst utility bills are for late summer, to cover the air conditioning. Heating costs are very low. I quickly learned to convert to dry landscaping. It was no use trying to make my yard another version of Minnesota prairie land. In the future we will probably pay more for water, because we are in a five year drought. But water is still a bargain.

I get worried when a city wants to tap an aquifer in a desert. I do not see how that water supply can get renewed fast enough. And with Governor Davis involved... Well, that settles it.

[nycgal]

Please remove me from your ping list. Thanks

[gcruse]

It's not just California.

No pumping permits issued, yet, for Pickens’ water deal

Country World, Thursday, April 25, 2002

WHITE DEER, Texas (AP) – Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens and other Panhandle landowners seeking to mine water from the Ogallala Aquifer came away from an April 11 water district meeting still without pumping permits.

The board of directors of the Panhandle Groundwater conservation District in White Deer told Pickens and the others, known collectively as Mesa Water Inc., that a decision on the consortium’s high-impact permits will come May 15.

"Sure I’m disappointed," Pickens said, "But I can understand exactly what the chairman was saying, and I agree with it, too. But I still thought they’d rule today."

The district board learned from the district’s staff on April 11 details of the well field configuration and impact of Mesa’s plan to pump water from beneath 150,000 acres, which are on noncontiguous land parcels.

Board chairman Charles Bowers said the board needed time to go through the large volume of information received April 11.

"I don’t think it would be prudent on our part to move quickly on something that will have an impact on generations to come," Bowers said. "I want to go carefully on this. It’s very important."

The board almost didn’t get a chance to even consider ruling. As the April 11 meeting began, Mesa and the water authority still had not finalized an agreement to end the water authority’s June 2001 protest of the permits.

In August 2001, Mesa sued the water authority, claiming its new wells in Roberts County would infringe on Mesa’s property rights.

On April 11, it was a chicken vs. egg issue: Mesa wouldn’t be able to get its permits if the water authority didn’t drop its protest and Mesa wouldn’t drop its lawsuit until the permits were issued.

The two sides agreed on April 11 to do all the procedures simultaneously.

"This is a big day," water authority general manager Kent Satterwhite said. "The lawsuit is dismissed and we have a settlement on the agreed-to permits. Now it’s just up to the groundwater district to do what they feel is necessary."

If Mesa gets permits, it still needs buyers. Pickens has talked to several cities, including San Antonio and Dallas, and he recently mentioned parts of West Texas and New Mexico as potential buyers.

One plan that would keep Mesa water in the Panhandle is in the early stages, said Salem Abraham, a Canadian resident who would act as a broker for the deal.

The plan would allow Abraham, who has an option on water rights owned by the city of Amarillo for about 100,000 acres in Hartley County, to sell those rights to as many as 12 communities in the western Panhandle.

The proposal would also allow eastern New Mexico to benefit, building a pipeline that would be used jointly by Panhandle and New Mexico communities.

Abraham would then act as a broker for Mesa to sell some of its Roberts County water to Amarillo. The deal could save hundreds of millions of dollars in pipeline construction costs for all the communities involved, Abraham said.

Before pumping, Mesa also would have to address environmental concerns due to lower water levels during low-flow periods on the Canadian River. Several endangered or threatened species, including the Arkansas River shiner, are within Roberts County, according to the Panhandle Audubon Society.

 

 

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

OK!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

They are going to drain that aquifer totally dry!

The really huge amounts of water are up in Western Nebraska!

Ogallala Aquifer Statistics

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Another Link:

The Ogallala Aquifer

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

[gcruse]

The law is that you own the mineral rights to your land, which includes water. If you strike oil on your land, and your neighbor doesn't put a well on his, assuming you share the same oil pool, you get all his oil. Where water is concerned, I think it is the craziest damned thing I ever heard of. As I recall, Picken's permits were approved.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Many years ago, I believe I heard of someone promoting a scheme to build a very large aqueduct on the Eastern Slopes of the Rockies into Canada and the Artic and bring water down to the High Plains and use the Aquifer as a storage reservoir.
Frankly not a bad scheme!

At the time it was booed off the stage, as it would cost several billions of dollars at that time!

[gcruse]

Problem now is that Canadians do not want to sell their water. Reverse osmosis, anyone?

[ErnBatavia]

Ernest, you've got to be the FREEP king for being able to pull up and post/insert data. I'm jealous; I can't even post a blasted picture!!

[SierraWasp]

"I can't even post a blasted picture!!"

I'm with you, ErnBatavia. He's great, isn't he!!!

[Clinging Bitterly]

> The law is that you own the mineral rights to your land, which includes water.

Not necessarily. It can be quite complicated in the west, just who owns what water. If a landowner uses water in a way that depletes his neighbor's water, he could get hauled in to court. We elect commissioners by district around here just to deal with the issue of uses of water (and soil) that lies, for the most part, on and under private property.

One of my customers where I work has been going through such a thing. He has a small plot of land, basically a typical rural homesite, and up the hill from him on land owned by a timber company, is a spring that is his source of water. He owns a right to that source of water that is on land that he does not own. Over the past couple of years there have been activities on the timber company's land that have damaged the spring, or at least the water from it. His case has been rather complicated, because the timber company also owns a right to the same water. The water law issues that get brought up here are endless. Who is senior, who conveyed what property and rights to whom, and when. Is either party actually using the water or just somehow stopping the other party from using it. Who own how much? If there is not enough for all parties, who gets enough and who does not?

Water flows around and it really doesn't follow property, or even political boundaries. Even underground, a significant amount pumped out of the ground can lower the water level for miles around, and I can see why the little guy ranchers down on the Mojave might be concerned if a big outfit came along and wanted a water lease from the government to pump out mass quantities and sell it.

Dave in Eugene

[gcruse]

> The law in Texas  is that you own the mineral rights to your land, which includes water.

[Clinging Bitterly]

> At the time it was booed off the stage.

We are more liable to have real water shortages in the near future than oil shortages. Odd for this planet, 70% of which is under water.

Lately, California has been floating trial baloons on a proposal to divert a fair amount of the Columbia River's flow into their state. If you think about the growth there in the recent past decades, they must have the Colorado just about maxed out.

Getting water from the Columbia to California is a doable thing, and it would likely stir up an economic boom in Oregon and California that would last a lifetime, but there would be a cost in depleting another great western river that future generations would bear someday.

I think we need to figure something else out here.

Dave in Eugene

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Aw Shucks -- Blush!

It is all because of my new powerful computer:

Got an Athlon 2000+ and 138 Gigabytes of rotating memory!

Windows XP on an Maxtor 10k SCSI 4 ms access time HDD! Works nice. IE 6 is a mess, can't copy partial source now!

It isn't that hard, if you know just a few things!