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You just KNOW that environmentalists will find some way to make this an impossibility.

Not in Africa. This is one area where it's actually an advantage to be an African.

The various busybodies who afflict their pet causes on you guys are moralizers at heart. Speaking cynically for a moment, this moralization is normally a strength because it removes the "nudgings" from practical criticism and makes them seem an imperative. Who subjects moral decisions to a cost-benefit analysis? Even thinking about it is kinda creepy.

So, moralization works far better than pragmatism. It puts the opponents on the defensive and often disarms them. Normally, the only defense that works (except as a stopgap) is to credibly show that the moralizers are themselves hypocrites.

(I use "moralizers" because busybodies of this sort are politicals at heart. Moral reasoning, however sound, does not dissuade them. What dissuades them is public pressure, particularly public pressure motivated by moral outrage.)

Now in Africa, you have a group of people that the entire moralizer circuit considers disadvantaged: the underdogs. If the liberals have any principle that's non-negotiable, it would be "sympathy for the underdog." Moralizing liberals, consequently, will not go a'bannin' any activity that's undertaken by the disadvantaged underdog, however "immoral" by their standards.

Case in point: in southern Nigeria, homosexuality is illegal. If one man sticks his wing-wang into another man's evacuation chamber, both men can be sent to the hoosegow for up to 14 years. Yep, there have been protests about it from the usual suspects. But, with the sole exception of President Obama (and the Brits) threatening to withhold foreign aid in response to a Nigerian bill criminalizing gay marriage, there's been only talk and no action.

Why? Because African governments can deter the usual moralizers and even infect them with a bad conscience with these three words: "racism," "imperialism," "neo-colonialism." Those three words enter into many ready ears at the United Nations. They also enter into many ready ears in America itself, and would enter into more if the Nigerians adapt the playbook of the Vietnamese Communists.

What goes for Nigeria goes for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. If anything, moreso because the Nigerian economy is currently booming.

So, if that aquifer is developed, the viros will likely be stymied outright. Picking on a generally-accepted underdog will make them look really bad.