Friday's Internet Edition, July 04, 2008.
|
Leader-Press Correspondent - GATESVILLE – Big money and big business are systematically buying up Texas water resources and soon there’ll be none left for you and me.
That’s just an opinion, but it’s based upon years of study and issue watching by David Freeman, of Evant, a self-studied expert on Texas ground water law and issues. Freeman agreed three years ago to help Coryell County find a way to either organize or merge with a ground water conservation district so local folks would have ultimate control over what happens to their water.
Ground water is the kind you can’t see. If water is captured in a lake, it is surface water and subject to a whole different set of rules. But in Texas, ground water is governed by a centuries-old law called the “Rule of Capture, which states: “he who has the biggest pump gets all the water he wants,” Freeman said
It important because when the ground water is depleted, it’s gone, Freeman said. “I know of a housing development – in fact I visited it in Alpine, just east of town – where there were about 10 nice, $350,000 homes. One by one their wells started going dry. Nobody could figure out why until the City of Alpine said they had installed two huge 24-inch water pumps that systematically drew the water table down to where those individual wells went dry,” Freeman said.
“Not only was the city protected by the Rule of Capture, but the law says the rule isn’t even arguable in court, so the land owners couldn’t even take the city to court. They just had dry wells and there was nothing they could do about it,” said Freeman.
Only three or four state in the U.S. still employ the Rule of Capture and Texas is the only one west of the Mississippi, Freeman said. “The ‘Big Money’ already is buying up land all over Texas so they can tie up the ground water. There’s more than 300,000 acres in the Panhandle owned by (one man) who plans to mine the water for sale to San Antonio. Water is going to be more valuable than oil in the future.
“(Speaker of the Texas House) Tom Craddick, who’s from Midland, already is arranging for some of his big business buddies to take advantage of this situation and there are others like T. Boone Pickens (legendary Texas oil man) and the Bass Brothers (of Ft. Worth) who are weighing in on this right now.”
Freeman suggested that if “big business” retains the rights to vast expanses of underground water in Texas, considering the right of capture, there’ll be little left for anyone else who can’t pay.