One of the ways you can claim rights to water sources is to own land next to them or over them. It seems intuitive that you should be able to dip into a river running along your property to get a drink for yourself and possibly your livestock or water for your plants and possibly your farm fields. That works so long as you don't hog too much of the river flow and your downstream neighbors can do the same as you are doing. In practice there are so many humans today demanding so much water that the amounts each person or enterprise can withdraw are usually regulated by agreement or law.
The same goes for groundwater since aquifers rarely span just one person's property and can be very large, for example, the Ogallala aquifer which lies below 122 million acres of the U.S. Great Plains.
What is not so intuitive is that water rights can belong to people far from the water itself and that the rights to that water can be traded like any commodity. That's what residents of the Neches Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District in the middle of East Texas discussed recently and quite heatedly in a public meeting of district officials.
In this community in and around Jacksonville, Texas, about two hours east of Dallas, the residents were discussing permits sought by entities controlled by Dallas-based hedge fund manager Kyle Bass. Bass's plan is to withdraw about 15 billion gallons annually from the aquifer underneath the district using two properties owned by Bass, one 4,300 acres and another 7,200 acres. Texas's so-called rule-of-capture water rights allow anyone owning land over an aquifer to withdraw water from it even when this affects other landowners. (For a primer on the range of water rights in the United States, read more here.)
For now Bass's plan has been stymied by adverse court rulings that may limit or even prohibit what he proposes to do. But with huge amounts of money at stake, Bass will almost certainly appeal. Meanwhile, farmers and ranchers who make up most of those affected worry that their water supplies will be adversely affected and thereby undermine their livelihoods.
The difficult truth for Texas farmers and ranchers is that water under their lands is increasingly seen as a source for the state's growing metropolises. Grist reports that the 140-mile Vista Pipeline already moves 16 billion gallons of water per year to San Antonio from the same aquifer Bass wants to tap. The Carizzo-Wilcox aquifer runs on an angle to the southwest from East Texas to the Rio Grande. The withdrawals have adversely affected water flows from wells near where the pipeline pumps its water supply. Nearby, Austin is adding to an increasing network of pipes bringing water pumped from adjacent counties.
A logical response might be to say that people should move to where the water is rather than the other way around. But as Marc Reisner, author of the classic study of water in the American West, Cadillac Desert, observed: "Water moves uphill toward money." Reisner was, of course, referring to water that is moved up and over the Tehachapi Mountains on its way to southern California. But the point is really metaphorical and can be easily generalized.
Grand schemes have been proposed to bring Mississippi River water and water from the Pacific Northwest to the American West. Neither appears to be practical from an engineering standpoint and would be politically explosive. The timelines for completion of such projects, if they were feasible, would run in the decades.
For America's water-starved areas that leaves conservation and ever more rapid exploitation of nearby, but dwindling water resources. The farmers and ranchers are right to be worried about their water supplies. The question is, will those living in the cities seeking that water make the connection between those water resources and the ability to find what they want at reasonable prices at the grocery store—and to visit the verdant rural landscapes when they want to take trip in the countryside?
Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Common Dreams, Naked Capitalism, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.
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