Selling West Texas Water (2)

Yesterday afternoon the Far West Texas Water Planning Group's monthly meeting was held in Van Horn, and an AP article in the Fort Worth Star Telegram said that over 400 people attended along with a few representatives from the General Land Office. The major issue was the proposal by Rio Nuevo, Ltd., to lease water rights under a large land area owned by the State of Texas.

Land office officials assured people at the meeting that the water permits would still be issued locally and that the limited water supply wouldn't be threatened.

"We don't want to do anything that is going to wreck, to ruin, to leave waterless West Texas," said Bill Warnick, land office general council.

[Land office policy director Trace] Finley said Rio Nuevo doesn't have any buyers for the water and that it would start pumping water for export a year or two after it starts drilling test wells.

Rio Nuevo has offered a bonus check to be deposited in the Permanent School Fund when a lease is signed, and many in the crowd shouted out "bribe" when Finley discussed it.

For more background see this post, below, and Walsingham at Jessica's Well has some commentary about the issue as well.

It doesn't appear that any representatives from Rio Nuevo, Ltd., made it to the meeting which seems to suggests that they would have preferred that the deal be handled in the back offices of the state capitol rather than in a public forum. And it appears to me that there is so much opposition to this proposal that the partners of Rio Nuevo need to do some major league PR if they hope to convince the public that deal really is in the best interest of Texas.

As the old Texas saying goes: "Whiskey's for drinkin' and water's for fightin'". Stay tuned.

Comments

[concermed citizen]

It should be illegal to ever allow the outright selling of a water right. The water right should belong to the land where the water is at. The only way water should be allowed to leave the land where the water right is at is by a yearly lease of a portion of the water, (never the entire amount of the water), to be either renewed or not renewed yearly by the owner of the water right. Period. End of discussion, forever.