Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Commodity or not, and water rights and boards aside, Bauman
says water isn't likely to end up beside pork bellies and tin on the
Chicago commodities exchange any time soon. “I don't know that
that could happen because water is readily available to anybody for
free. Just put a great big funnel in your backyard and you will have all
the water you want. The water that falls in your yard is your water—
unlike other commodities, such as gold. [That is, unless you live in
a state where the water from the sky doesn't belong to you!] You can't
just go out and dig for gold, because there's no way you can assay it
and refi ne it and so forth. But water is readily available,” he adds.
The business of water expert Maxwell has a slightly different
take. “The one thing which I think has become clearer during this
recent recession is the additional fi nancial and investment attri-
butes of water and water stocks. Water-related investments behave
differently in an economic downturn. They tend to be much more
buffered from external economic circumstances than most other
types of investments simply because our water usage doesn't really
depend much on economic circumstances.
“In that regard, I believe that water will start to be viewed as
almost a separate type of investment class in the future—whether
as physical water, water utility stocks, or the stocks of compa-
nies that provide goods and services for the provision of water.
In the future, water may come to be viewed more as a commod-
ity or as almost a 'store of value' as we view gold or silver today.
I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine that 50 or 100
years from now we may see a reversal of some of the migration
trends that have shaped this country in the past 50 or 100 years.
People will start to move away from the arid Southwest, away from
the boom towns like Las Vegas and Phoenix, and back to areas
like Cleveland (Ohio) or Buffalo (New York) where water is more
abundant,” Maxwell adds.
Stocks, Mutual Funds, and More
Various stocks, mutual funds, and unit investment trusts count water-
related investments as part of their portfolios. That investment
may relate to water utilities, infrastructure, conveyance, treatment,
