The Waterman Cometh

T. Boone Pickens making waves with new water pipeline

Bloomberg News reported on November 6 that T. Boone Pickens "may have engineered one of his shrewdest takeovers yet." The octogenarian chairman of BP Capital LLC, Dallas, has devised a way to create a water district on eight acres of land outside Amarillo. Pickens hopes to use the land to condemn property and sell tax-exempt bonds to build an expansive water pipeline.

The financial news service reports that Pickens' plan includes a 328-mile, $2.2 billion pipeline to move water from the panhandle, which is home to the 174,000-square-mile Ogallala Aquifer, to the suburbs of Dallas and San Antonio. Best known for his dealings in oil, Pickens' Mesa Water Inc. has acquired 200,000 acres of Texas water rights and may seek to double that amount.

In addition to the multi-billion dollar pipepline, Pickens' vision includes piggybacking windpower farms on the surrounding ranchland and feeding their electricity into to the grid through a transmission network built along the water pipeline's right-of-way. The amibitious project could cost upwards of $10 billion altogether, however the idea is meeting with some resistance that could hamper plans.

Salon.com ran an article on the subject "High noon at Ogallala aquifer" in Feb. 2001. .:.

Image: Ogallala Aquifer, USGS