Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
But, adds Jeffrey Kightlinger, “I don't think we're looking at
icebergs at the moment. An engineer once told me you could prob-
ably get the thing moving into the right place, but it would be very
tough to stop it.”
One geoscientist at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas pro-
posed turning formerly mothballed warships into fl oating desali-
nation plants. There's a precedent for this: National Guard mobile
water-purifying systems have been used successfully in Iraq as well as
in states like Iowa in times of fl ooding, says Iowa rural water expert
Huff. Whether the United States is ready for such unusual water-
related actions is open to discussion, though today there's plenty
of talk about these fl oating desalination options. Another new
entrant with grandiose plans to sell water, this time from Alaska, is
S2C Global Systems (OTCBB: STWG), a San Antonio, Texas-based
company with subsidiaries in Alaska, British Columbia, and Nevada.
The company touts itself as focusing on the export of “billions of
gallons of water globally from the watersheds of Baranoff Island,
Alaska.” In July 2010, the company announced it was within months
of beginning distribution from a “World Water Hub” on the west
coast of India.
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Whether that's a done deal is yet to be determined.
Remember the big plans of the Canadian fi rm that wanted to
export Lake Superior water to China. Public outcry shot that down
back in 1998.
Native Americans in the Water Equation
Other possible players in the future of water as a commodity are
Native American tribes in the West. Many already have profi ted
from their federally reserved senior rights to the nation's water.
Time and again, courts have upheld their water rights as senior to,
or taking precedence over, other state water rights. Recall the Wind
River Reservation's court-approved claim for hundreds of thou-
sands of acre-feet of water (mentioned in Chapter 5). Other Indian
reservations potentially hold tremendous power over water, too.
And power means rights to water and money.
The Native American tribes in Idaho, for example, already are
active in water marketing, says Tuthill. Most of these tribes have
