Earth Equity News

When it Comes to Water, Pickens is Far from Green. Commentary by Julene Bair, USA Today, September 17, 2008. "While touting his plan to wean us off foreign oil, Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens… says little of his intention to market fossil water… Thanks to help he obtained from the Texas Legislature, he has stacked the board of a tiny water district [and] by the power of eminent domain, also granted him by the Legislature, he can force landowners to sell him rights to a 320-mile strip of land [by which] he will pipe the water down the same corridor [to Dallas that] he plans to use transmitting his wind power… But… Pickens… [is] just one of thousands of capitalists who sell precious Ogallala water for private gain. Like him, they are aided by government… Pickens shouldn't be allowed to sell 65 billion gallons a year as he proposes, but neither should Plains farmers be allowed to pump 6.2 trillion gallons annually… over half of [which] is poured onto corn. With populations increasing and global warming likely to cause widespread drought… we should redirect the billions we spend on corn subsidies… [and] take control from local water districts. Under federal or state control, we could end Texas's 'right of capture' policy, which parcels water to the landowner with the biggest pump." Julene Bair is a writer and author of One Degree West: Reflections of a Plainsdaughter. She will soon complete Where Rivers Run Sand, a personal account of the crisis facing the Ogallala Aquifer.