Liquidity: Privatization and the Rise of Big Water - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 225

County to help the rest? We have everything in place. Eventually, someone will need to
buy our water.”
Pickens figured that if he could convince DFW to spend $165 million to buy 65
billion gallons of Ogallala water a year, for thirty years, his Roberts County invest-
ments—reportedly $150 million by 2008 —would net Mesa Water over $1 billion. Des-
pite many contingencies, such as that Dallas officials remained noncommittal, Pickens
crowed, “This could be the biggest deal of my life!”
He said he was motivated less by money, “which I don't need,” than by the wish to
help his rural Roberts County neighbors. “Our plan is attractive, and they could make
about one million dollars per family. That's big. These folks are selling their water but
keeping their land. I have tripled the value of their property, and they are tickled to
death.”
Pickens's $1.5 billion pipeline would bring water over 328 miles, from his ranch,
across eleven counties and 650 pieces of private property, to DFW. Along the pipeline,
he announced in 2008, he would erect “the largest windmill farm in the world” and
ship green electricity on wires strung along the water-pipe corridor. (Citing transmis-
sion costs, he dropped the idea in 2009. But his “Pickens Plan” calls for the federal gov-
ernment to invest $1 trillion to build turbines on the Great Plains.)
The Mesa Water pipeline would cross private land. To make this feasible, Pickens will
have to negotiate with hundreds of individual property owners or find another way to
gain access to their land. It wasn't clear what this “other way” might be until 2007, when
a change in state law made by Governor Rick Perry allowed Pickens to form a new water
district, the Roberts County Fresh Water Supply District No. 1. This gave him the right
to issue tax-free bonds for his water pipe and electrical transmission lines, the power to
levy taxes, and, most important, to use the power of eminent domain to claim land for
the pipeline. Eminent domain is a controversial legal doctrine, dating back to 1066 and
William the Conqueror, by which the government can take, or force the sale of, private
property “for the public good.”
As the full implications of Pickens's new water district sank in, Panhandle residents
reacted with “a mix of anger and awe,” the local paper reported. “Many seemed stunned
that such a small district could boast such broad reach.” The Roberts County Water Dis-
trict “would not have been viable without the recent legislative changes,” charged Tex-
ans for Public Justice, which opposed it. A Pickens spokesman denied any connection
between Pickens's donations to state legislators and passage of the law.
In 2008, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) blocked the new law , saying that Texas
had failed to prove that the measure did not harm minority voting rights. But a Mesa
Water spokesman said he wasn't concerned because Fresh Water Supply District No.