Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
“I know of one farmer/rancher about seventy miles from here
who sold all his groundwater rights to SEMPRA, a California coal-
fi red generation outfi t. They had planned to build a plant in the
Jerome, Idaho, area,” says Newcomb. The plant construction plans
fell through, but Newcomb's fellow farmer still walked away with
“a signifi cant amount” of cash.
WATER TALES
Bruce Newcomb recalls the early years when he and his
family turned arid land in the West into rich ranchlands
with the help of water, and how they built wealth in the
process.
“Basically you took a piece of ground that was fairly
cheap as dry land grazing. That's what my father did
when he fi rst started and what I did when I fi rst started. I paid the
state of Idaho $50 an acre for some of my land, then I had to drill
wells, put in the sprinkler pipe and mainline. But when I was done,
I had ground worth $300 to $350 an acre. And I could irrigate it,
raise potatoes and wheat. . . . It was basically taking something of
no value and making something of value.
“At the time, there also were all kinds of state and federal incen-
tives to transform the land. Utility power companies even offered
incentives if you would just drill water wells. Some even paid for
your pumps to pump out the water in exchange for becoming your
power provider.”
Future Change Possible
However, even Newcomb admits that in the future he may not have
as much control over his water. That could be the case if, for exam-
ple, public policy dictated that because water is a public resource
and people can't live without it, it must be regulated so no one can
tie it all up, with potentially fatal results. Newcomb reconsiders,
though, and adds, “I think we basically have that now.” Nearly every
state has a department of water resources or something similar
