[Hat tip David Zetland]
In New Mexico journalist John Fleck writes about a court ruling limiting future well drilling for new residents:
“A state court this week threw out New Mexicans’ longstanding legal right to drill a domestic water well without having to worry about whether it would leave less water for their neighbors.
The ruling is a victory for activists who say that uncontrolled domestic well drilling poses a long-term threat to New Mexico’s ability to manage its dwindling water supples [sic]. But the details of how the ruling will affect developers who rely on domestic wells to supply the homes they build is unclear, experts said Friday.”
Meanwhile, in Texas…
T. Boone Pickens, who amassed a fortune in oil, has set his sights on water supplies and wind energy. The water component of his plan involves creating a private water utility as a front for selling water from a remote, depleting aquifer 250 miles to Dallas and using eminent domain to purchase the land for the pipeline. In Texas ground water rights permit you to get whatever water you can pump out.
The wind energy portion of the plan will use the water pipeline land for its transmission wires. There’s a bit more to this - including Pickens’ proposal that wind energy become a substitute for natural gas, which Americans would then use in their cars - but for our discussion now this goes far enough.
What’s noteworthy about all of this is how T. Boone Pickens used favorable state laws, including the ability to create a private water utility with the governmental power of imminent domain, to operate a for-profit enterprise indifferent to concerns about the public good. As a business proposition for making money, what I understand of Pickens’ plan strikes me as genius - cities like Dallas are going to put greater and greater demands on water resources and energy, and even if transmission costs are higher, the market will likely reach profitable pricing on water or energy or both at some point in the not-so-far future. As environmental and social policy, parts of Pickens’ plan are really terrible.
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