Business Week has a good one about how billionaire Oilman T. Boone Pickens has devised a clever-as-hell way to make yet another fortune by gobbling up water rights — by many accounts the only valuable thing the land can offer in parts the Texas Panhandle. He’ll do it by using eminent domain to build a 250-mile pipeline to thirsty cities who haven’t yet realized they need what he has. Or have but don’t want to admit it.
It’s aptly titled “There will be water” and quotes the viral “milkshake” scene from the final minutes of “There will be blood.” In case you forgot (and really, how could you?), they went something like this:
From the article:
“Pickens’ decision to get into the water business was regarded by some in the Panhandle as nothing more, or less, than a shrewd move by a man who knows the value of commodities. The economy of the High Plains region is based on people taking out the natural resources and selling them. If water that can’t be used for farming ends up in the taps of city residents hundreds of miles away, that’s fine.”
So he finagled state law to get the exceptional power of eminent domain by selling land to five people who work for him and triggering an election in which only two people could vote.Shrewd. That’s what good lawyers and lobbyists will buy you. And to the extent that Pickens is merely doing what the Texas state Legislature has – on some level through inattention — allowed him to do, you kind of just have to tip your cap to him. Thing is, his argument relies on the assumption that water can be treated like oil — that it is viewed in the same way as any other commodity.
I suppose it could be and often is. But it doesn’t seem like a particularly humane way to view something that’s essential to life. Though we’ve come to rely on it, people don’t need oil to live. Everyone needs water. Animals need water. Crops need water. And the belief that you can do whatever the hell you want on your tiny (or massive, as the case may be) slice of the world is a concept that has failed miserably before.
But it’s kind of funny in that ‘ha-ha-this-is-awkward’ kind of way, since so many people claim to be devoted to both small government and the Free Market. T. Boone would probably argue the plains don’t need to be protected from him.
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Don’t be so certain that water rights is all the Panhandle has to offer. The soil is perfect for farming, and there are still pockets of natural gas and oil. And the people are salt of the earth. Of course farmers have been draining the Ogallala at an unsustainable rate for years, but T-Boone’s plan will no doubt speed that rate up considerably. It could be the straw that makes camels a very feasible form of transportation in the already semi-arid Panhandle.
Comment by Andy Jones June 17, 2008 @ 3:02 pm