Posted on 08/25/2008 7:56:07 AM PDT by ZGuy
Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is about to make a killing by selling water he doesn’t own. As he does it, it will be praised as a planet-friendly wind project.
The basic story amounts to this: Pickens, thanks to favors from state lawmakers whose campaigns he funded, has created a new government whose only voters are two of his employers; this has empowered Pickens to more cheaply pump water from an aquifer and, by use of eminent domain, seize land across 11 counties in order to pipe the water to Dallas. To win environmentalist approval of this hardly “sustainable” practice, he has piggybacked this water project onto a windmill project pitched as an alternative to oil.
Amid all the hype Pickens’ windmill plan has gotten, the interesting part — the water part — has been mostly ignored, except for an excellent Business Week story by Susan Berfield and a column by Steve Milloy.
Roberts County, Texas, sits atop the Ogallala Aquifer, a huge underground reservoir that stretches all the way to South Dakota. It’s in Roberts County that T. Boone Pickens set aside eight acres from his ranch for drilling deep into the aquifer.
Then he turned this parcel into a town, basically, with only two eligible voters — both of whom were his employees. (This required a change in Texas law in 2007 — a change facilitated no doubt by his $1.2 million in campaign contributions to Texas legislators in 2006). Then there was an election in this district, in which both voters voted to make this 8-acre municipality a special fresh-water district.
Pickens’ wholly owned government entity now can issue tax-free bonds (meaning he can borrow at a serious discount) and use the power of eminent domain to pressure landowners to sell — or to take their land if they hold out. The eminent domain power is key to building the pipeline that will run this water down to the Dallas area, where Pickens hopes to sell the water. If your land lies in the path of his proposed pipeline, you got a letter explaining that T. Boone wants to buy a stretch of your land — and explaining that he can use eminent domain if you resist. If this begins to sound too cutthroat to the public, Pickens just reminds journalists and politicians that following this water pipeline will be the transmission cables for Pickens’ mammoth wind farm.
Nobody owns the aquifer — that would be too capitalist, of course — but in Texas, whoever has the water beneath his land can pump as much as he wants. The limits on this are usually pumping capacity (which requires money) and ability to sell it (which requires, among other things, pipelines). Pickens has cleared those hurdles, and now he can drain the aquifer faster than anyone ever before, future generations and other water users be damned.
Just sayin.
but in Texas, whoever has the water beneath his land can pump as much as he wants.
I’m not sure thats true... I had to get a permit from the
state for an extra well.
Only after I've run it through once.
Tbone is just trying to save the planet
;)
t-butt is soros in a cowboy hat.
LLS
I will ascend to the seat of the Most High.
Go Pokes!!
T. BOOB, YOU MAGNIFICENT, GREEDY BASTARD!
These power-mad radical leftists are a real cancer upon America -—
Yeah, but you can pump as much as you want/ can afford. And, you ain’t a city. Evidently, he now is.
Next thing you know, T. Boone will block out the Sun. “Exxxxcellent!!”
Do all you kids here know T Boone sorta had a bad reputation back in the late 70s and early 80s for buying up large blocks of stock in companies and then being nasty to them so they’d buy it back for a higher price.
The board of directors and the press called it greenmail....he and Carl Ichan, Carl Linder, Sir Goldsmith and others were big names in it.
Pickens would always say the companies were undervalued.
This explains soooooo much.
Tboone started out in oil, but soon learned that buying and canabalizing companies was a lot easier and more fun. When I hear the name TBoone, I always assume there is a deal to screw somebody.
AWe cannot allow the next POTUS to stack the Supreme Court with more living-constitution liberals.
Preview to the coming water wars?
We have a small mutual water company that consists of 30 shares. Lots of private wells in these parts. Every few years our lefty county starts making noise about taking over the local private water systems. So far we’ve been able to resist.
He who controls the water controls everything.
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