Easy Pickens?

This Bloomberg News item is a little hard to parse, but it seems Boone Pickens is advancing his plans to ship and sell water from the Texas Panhandle (that is, water under the Panhandle, in the Ogallala Aquifer) to the increasingly thirsty 'burbs of Dallas and San Antonio. The latest: the former corporate raider and oil billionaire has somehow finagled the eminent domain rights for, as well as the authority to issue tax-exempt bonds to finance construction of, a 328-mile pipeline to transport the water. According to the report, Pickens will also piggyback a massive wind project on the pipeline, erecting turbines on adjacent ranchland and running transmission lines along the length of the pipeline. But, while wind power is generally viewed favorably by environmentalists, the privatization of water is another thing entirely. As Ken Kramer of the Texas Sierra Club is quoted as saying: "It's as essential to human life as air. That puts water in a different class."