Panhandle Water Theft Is Averted

Back in 2008 I posted about a plan by billionaire mogul T. Boone Pickens to steal the water underneath the Texas Panhandle for his own financial gain. Pickens (pictured) had bought a lot of land in Roberts County, and Texas law gave him the right to use of the water beneath his own land. The law was originally meant to allow farmers and ranchers to drill water wells and use the water they needed to make their farms or ranches viable. But Pickens intended to misuse that law.

The land that Pickens had purchased sits on top of one of the largest natural aquifers in the United States -- the Ogallala Aquifer. This aquifer supplies much of the water needs for the Panhandle and a large part of West Texas, and it also provides water for parts of seven other states. While the aquifer is a good source of an enormous amount of fresh water, it has a drawback that makes it more sensitive to misuse than most other aquifers. Most aquifers are replenished by rainwater filtering down through the soil, but the Ogallala is covered by a type of clay soil that prevents most of that rainwater from filtering down to replenish it.

Because of this inability to adequately replenish itself, the Ogallala Aquifer has already lost about 10% of its water -- mainly due to irrigation for farming and ranching since the 1950s. This has made it necessary for regional water authorities to plan the Panhandle water use to try and protect the aquifer for future generations.

Pickens wanted to change that. He had decided to build a pipeline 9 feet in diameter to pump water from his land (water from the Ogallala) to sell in other parts of Texas. He company, Mesa Water, had engaged in discussions with cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and the San Antonio area, where he hoped to sell enormous quantities of the water. And there is no doubt that his huge pipeline could eventually turn much of the Panhandle and West Texas into just more desert land (something the state already has too much of).

That's because although Pickens would only be pumping the water beneath his land, the enormous amount of water being pumped would have affected the entire aquifer, eventually emptying it. Pickens would have gotten much richer, but for people in Texas and seven other states it would have been a disaster.

Last year State Senator Kel Seliger was able to push a law through the state legislature that said Panhandle water couldn't be shipped by pipeline for more than 75 miles. This law meant that Pickens couldn't sell water from the Ogallala Aquifer to other parts of Texas. Pickens filed suit in an Austin court claiming that the new law violated settled Texas law by denying him the right to do as he pleased with the water underneath his land. That lawsuit is still pending, and its anyone's guess who would win it.

Fortunately, it now looks like Pickens' planned sale of the Ogallala Aquifer has now been averted. A few days ago Mesa Water and the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority (CRMWA) announced that had reached a tentative agreement for the CRMWA to purchse thousands of acres of land in Roberts County from Mesa Water (Pickens). If the sale goes through, and there's no reason to think it won't, then this would end Picken's plan to ship the Ogallala's water to other parts of the state.

This should be a cause for celebration here in the Panhandle and other places that depend on water from the aquifer. It's been a long fight, but it looks like it's finally over and an equitable solution has been reached -- a solution that will provide badly needed water for many generations to come (as long as some reasonable conservation measures are followed).

This is just one example of how corporate greed could have caused a disaster for people in eight states. Fortunately, at least for now, that disaster has been averted. But we must remain vigilant in this country and realize that corporations care only about profits -- not people and their well-being.