Liquidity: Privatization and the Rise of Big Water - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 227

But it would be foolish to believe that Pickens had forgotten about water as a commod-
ity. Through additional land purchases, he had built Mesa Vista Ranch up to sixty-eight
thousand acres, which not only made him the largest landowner in Roberts County but
gave him control of more permitted groundwater than any other individual in the Un-
ited States.
“I'm in no rush,” he said to me in Dallas. “he people who have the water want to sell
it, and people will buy the water when they need it. That's the blood, guts, and feathers
of the thing.”
A COMMON, OR A COMMODITY?
By 2009, water was a $500-billion-a-year industry in America, and growing, according
to the WallStreetJournal. Like oil, water has never been equitably distributed. About
50 percent of the world's freshwater is controlled by half a dozen nations. As water be-
comes an increasingly valuable resource, sodden nations, such as Canada and Norway,
could become the wealthiest countries of the twenty-first century, perhaps even forming
a water cartel, “the next OPEC.” The difference between the two resources is, of course,
that while oil is crucially important to the global economy, it is not a necessity and can
be replaced by other fuels. Water is an essential resource for which there is no substi-
tute.
T. Boone Pickens understands this and instinctually wants to control, or privatize,
the resource “just sitting there” under his backyard. But privatized water pushes an
emotional hot button in people. To some, this is just business; to others, it is a moral
outrage.
Like Pickens, executives at private water companies maintain that privatizing water
utilities is a socially beneficial, technologically advanced “economic good.” Companies
such as Suez, Veolia, and RWE/Thames manage water utilities and finance hydro-in-
frastructure around the world. American cities such as Lexington, Kentucky, Atlanta,
Georgia, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Riverside, California, have come to rely on private
water suppliers—but they have not always been happy with the results.
The debate over privatizing water sometimes teeters over into moral philosophy. Is
water just another article of commerce, a “commodity” like oil or natural gas to be ex-
tracted from the earth, processed, and traded in the global marketplace? Or is it a “com-
mon,” a basic human right, like the air we breathe? Another question often raised is,
who benefits from privatization, and who doesn't?