T. Boone Pickens Out for Water, Not Wind
Texas billionaire, T. Boone Pickens, is causing quite a stir across the nation with his bold Picken’s Plan to build the largest wind farm in the nation. In fact, he has caused such a commotion, that everyone seems to be forgetting about Mesa Water.
Pickens’ company, Mesa Water, bought more than 200,000 acres of ground water rights in Roberts County, Texas. Estimating that he could make more than $1 billion off of the $75 million investment over the next few decades, Pickens wants to drain the Ogallala Aquifer to meet the demand for water in west Texas.
This video from Zaproot, The Truth About the Pickens Plan, is very entertaining and does a great job of explaining the slight of hand trick that Pickens seems to be playing with wind, water and the dreaded emminent domain.
Happy viewing!
For Related Post on T. Boone Pickens:
- T. Boone Pickens Knows Energy and So Does George Chapman
- Picken’s Plan Spins the Wind Turbine
- Pickens Says Peak Oil Reached
- Who Does Rainwater Belong to?
This seems a little off to me. The Picken’s plan is really put in place to help facilitate Mesa Water? Let’s do some math. The water project will generate $1 billion from a $75 million investment.
Part of the Pickens Plan, his own wind farm will require 667 1.5-megawatt turbines from General Electric (with only the first installment costing $2 billion). This initial investment will cost many times more money than any profit to be made from the water project.
Also - the video from Zaproot, featuring “Garden Girl”… seems to be debunking the Pickens Plan largely based on his massive wealth and his affiliation to Bush.
I think its good to always look past the candy coating of projects like these, but always important to look at both sides of an issue without letting your political views skew truth. Pickens is a republican. He likes to make money. That doesn’t mean the Pickens Plan is wrong. If the math made more sense, I might be a little more skeptical of the relationship between Mesa Water and the Pickens Plan, but it doesn’t.
This fails to understand context. Windmills actually save water by displacing thermal wet cooled generation. This effect is far, far greater than all of the water he wants to drain. So the effect is net positive on water supplies.
This is just very typical short sighted environmentalism, and I’m disappointed to see it proliferate like this.
[...] the Internet, it is especially easy to be a critic from afar, breaking down or building up different things with emotions and imagery rather than critical [...]
Hmmm, give me imminent domain to build a pipeline from the midwest to the west. He says it’s for energy, I really don’t believe that.
While people are worried about energy, water will become the real scarce resource in the next 50 years.