Pickens' energy plans clouded by federal decision

Federal authorities may unravel a tiny Panhandle government with far-reaching powers.

The U.S. Department of Justice blocked changes to Texas law that last fall helped create the board of the Roberts County Fresh Water Supply District, a body dominated by employees of Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens.

Losing the district's authority could complicate Pickens' most visible means so far of running pipeline and power line infrastructure across the state.

Jay Rosser, spokesman for Pickens' Mesa Water, said the decision as Mesa officials understood it did little to change the board or plans to move massive water and wind energy resources out of the Panhandle and into the Metroplex. State officials were not sure what, if any, consequence the federal decision would force on the board and the water district.

"At this point we can't talk about anything because we haven't seen it," state attorney general spokesman Tom Kelley said.

A decision dated Thursday appears to make three of the board's five supervisors, including its president, ineligible to serve.

This got me thinking about a potential way to get water to the desert southwest and maybe Texas. A way not considered precisely because it is intermittent and counter-intuitive.

It begins by building an immense, underground lake, but without water. The lake is designed to store a huge volume of water with minimal loss due to evaporation, and unfriendly to microorganisms by bubbling oxygen gas through it, to keep it clean.

Above or around the lake is a large solar energy farm. But it is not meant to put energy on to the electrical grid, but to store a huge amount of energy for later use. A small part of the farm is used to generate oxygen gas for the lake.

All in preparation for the monsoon.

That is, through spring and early summer, the air in the desert southwest is very dry. Then about the first week of July, the monsoon comes in, bringing with it high humidity and some rain.

And this is what all that stored energy is for: to run massive dehumidifiers through cooling tunnels leading to the underground dry lake. This just means blowing moist air over cold metal coils.

For a month and a half or so each year, and during rain showers, giant fans push great amounts of moist air through cold dehumidifiers, precipitating lots of water which then goes into the underground lake.

In just a single season, it is unlikely that the underground lake will fill very much. So it may be a decade or even more before it is full. But that is what you get with any reservoir.

But when it is full, if there is a drought, and water levels are low, the lake will fill the gap, filling that critical need when there is no other source of water.

And even in good years, when the lake is full, any extra will help keep the costs down during the dry months.

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