Pickens’ Water Group Proposes
Partnership With Adversaries

LUBBOCK — Mesa Water has apparently come up with a new plan in which it might partner with an old adversary.

At a water forum here, a Mesa official proposed dual pipelines with the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, one to carry water from Lake Meredith and one to carry groundwater from the northeast Texas Panhandle to the 11 cities served by CRMWA. In addition, the pipelines could be extended to connect with the Colorado Municipal Water District distribution system, taking the water all the way to the Midland-Odessa area. Along the way, water could be sold to thirsty rural communities.

Dallas oilman and entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens said he's not an expert on water, just on a water situation in four counties: Ochiltree, Lipscomb, Hemphill and Roberts counties in the northeast corner of the Texas Panhandle.

Pickens, who owns a ranch in Roberts County, said he is looking for someone to buy water from beneath his ranch and the ranches of neighbors who are operating under the umbrella of Mesa Water Inc.

"I had never even considered the commercial sale of water until the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority and Amarillo bought the water rights that surrounded me," Pickens told a standing room only crowd here at a water forum at Texas Tech University.

The Canadian River Municipal Water Authority is producing water from their well field in Roberts County. They began pumping in December. Amarillo is not scheduled to begin pumping from their well field for another 25 years.

"I'm being drained," Pickens said.

He insisted that under Texas law it's a landowner's right to sell the water beneath his private property.

Pickens said he's asking only for the same rights as any other landowner or water producer who comes under the authority of the Panhandle Ground Water Conservation District, the governing body for ground water in much of the eastern Texas Panhandle.

The water district has issued permits to the City of Amarillo and to the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority allowing them to pump one acre-foot per year per acre held. Pickens said he wants only to be able to pump a like amount.

Amarillo holds more than 70,000 acres in the area; CRMWA holds more than 40,000 acres. Pickens and his group hold about 150,000 acres.

Pickens said he thinks he will be awarded such a permit soon.

While Pickens is meeting with New Mexico officials this month concerning a pipeline, he indicated that Mesa Water could be providing water to the Dallas-Fort Worth area much more easily and more quickly.

"We could be on production to Dallas by January 2005," Pickens said. "If we do it in West Texas, we could do it a year earlier. We could do it by 2005 to San Antonio, if we sold it to them."

He said he thinks he will eventually find a buyer for his water.

"We're talking about water in four counties," Pickens said. "It's the northeast four counties where there's little irrigation. There's 100,000 acres of irrigation out of 2.5 million acres, so you're not taking anybody's water except people who want to sell their water. Those ranchers up there want to sell their water. It's that simple. They have a right to sell it. You're not taking any water that somebody else is going to use."

Pickens also embraced a proposal set forth by Steve Stevens with Mesa Water earlier in the water forum here.

Stevens suggested combining the state water planning regions around Amarillo, Lubbock and Midland-Odessa (Regional Water Planning Groups A, O and F).

"When you are speaking about these three regions," Stevens said, "you are looking at 74 counties in the state with a population of approximately 1.5 million."

Numbers have always been a problem with water transportation. Because the initial costs are so high to build the infrastructure to transport water, a large population is needed to get the per-unit cost of water transported down to an affordable level.

It could cost a billion dollars to build a pipeline across the state to transport one gallon of water. To make that project feasible, someone would have to pay one billion dollars for that gallon of water, but if that pipeline could deliver a billion gallons of water, then the unit cost of the water delivered would drop to one dollar a gallon.

That is why Pickens initially talked about selling his water to major urban areas such as Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio or El Paso.

Such a scenario, however, raised a hue and cry in the Texas Panhandle.

Stevens said that under his proposal, the water would stay in West Texas.

A pipeline could be constructed, he said, to carry groundwater from Region A, the water planning region around Amarillo in the Panhandle, to Region O, the Lubbock area, and Region F, the Midland-Odessa area.

Stevens said the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority already has a 322-mile pipeline in place to transport water from Lake Meredith north of Amarillo in Region A south as far as Lamesa in Region O.

The Colorado Municipal Water District has a 600-mile distribution system running throughout Region F, Stevens said.

"Big Spring, headquarters for the Colorado Municipal Water District, is just 45 miles from Lamesa, where the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority's line ends," Stevens noted.

The existing CRMWA pipeline carries primarily lake water, he said. A new pipeline, paralleling the old one, could carry groundwater from Roberts County and be extended to Big Spring, where it could tie into the Colorado Municipal Water District distribution system.

The groundwater and lake water could be blended by individual cities along the route. Those cities could then distribute the treated water to nearby rural communities.

"A project of this magnitude would deliver a sufficient quantity of quality water to make the building of an extensive infrastructure feasible," Stevens said. "This network of water lines would not only serve the current cities and towns receiving water, but it would allow most of the communities in the High Plains to have plenty of good water."

Through the cooperation of the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, the Colorado River Municipal Water District, existing groundwater conservation districts and cities, Stevens said, the citizens of the Texas High Plains can manage the production, transmission and distribution of the Ogallala Aquifer, the huge underground water-bearing formation that extends from the Texas South Plains north into the Dakotas.

Pickens initially tried to sell his water to both CRMWA and the City of Amarillo, but he was rebuffed. Pickens said that was when he turned to the major metropolitan areas of Texas, but he's not ruling out selling water to communities in West Texas or New Mexico.

"All I intend to do is sell water," Pickens said, "and I'm going to do that."