Liquidity: Privatization and the Rise of Big Water - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 220

In 1999, Pickens formed Mesa Water and began to accumulate water rights to sell to
thirsty cities such as El Paso, Lubbock, or San Antonio. But as time passed, Mesa Water
focused on the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) Metroplex. Already the state's largest water
user, DFW's population was growing quickly in the midst of a worsening drought.
Many of Pickens's neighbors were alarmed by his plan to privatize the groundwater,
treating it as a commodity like oil or gas, to be sold to the highest bidder. Some of them
rallied against him and threatened lawsuits; others joined Mesa Water, hoping to profit.
As water supplies are stretched thin across the country, this scenario is becoming in-
creasingly familiar.
For much of the nation's history, Americans have fought over surface water—who
gets to use how much of lake or river water—but most of those disputes have been
settled; today, the biggest water wars are over ground-water.
FOSSIL WATER
A hundred times more water is stored underground than in all streams, rivers, and lakes
combined, according to the USGS. Groundwater can be found in a marsh, close to the
surface, or a thousand feet underground, in aquifers. At shallow depths, water is often
only a few hours old; at medium depth it can be hundreds of years old; at great depth,
groundwater can be a million or more years old.
Groundwater is often compared to money in a bank account: if it is withdrawn faster
than nature can replenish it, it will eventually run dry. Pumping water out of the ground
faster than it is replenished results in dry wells, reduced rivers and lakes, deterioration
of water quality, increased pumping costs (to reach ever-deeper aquifers), land subsid-
ence, and the formation of sinkholes that have been known to swallow pets, people,
cars, chunks of highway, and entire buildings. Near the ocean, overpumping aquifers
can result in saltwater intrusion, which has contaminated aquifers from Long Island,
New York, to Hilton Head, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Orange County,
California.
In 2008 Americans pumped 83.3 billion gallons of groundwater every day, a 23 per-
cent increase from 1970, according to the USGS. Globally, groundwater use exceeds 600
billion gallons per day. About half the US population , and most rural communities, use
groundwater for drinking supplies, representing 19 percent of the groundwater used
annually; 60 percent, or 50 billion gallons of water a day, is used for irrigation, in places
such as the Great Plains.
The groundwater beneath Pickens's ranch wasn't from just any aquifer. It was the
Ogallala, the largest groundwater supply in North America. The Ogallala (or High