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8.14.01 Water gives Nebraska clout Restrictions on the use of water, even the voluntary curbs requested in Omaha in recent days, are a rarity in Nebraska's largest city. Omaha, situated at near the junction the Platte and Missouri Rivers, is among the more fortunate of American cities in terms of having enough water. But no one can afford to be smug, not even water-rich Nebraskans. Globally, serious water shortages have already appeared. Ever more water is being demanded for agricultural and industrial use and by the world's expanding urban areas. Population pressure in the Third World has soaked up many existing supplies and polluted other supplies. Warmer temperatures in some parts of the globe have accelerated evaporation. Moreover, a New York Times account leaves no doubt that the shortage has spread to North America. The Times attributes to corporate planners the notion that water, in terms of supply and demand and value, will play a role in this century comparable to that of oil in the 1900s. Among the symptoms identified by The Times:
A scramble for water rights has already begun. First, it was landowners in the dry parts of the West who would purchase property primarily because it had good water, above or below the surface. Then cities in some Western states started buying ranch land in order to secure water rights for the future. Now businesses are seeing the possibilities. Some Texans who made money in oil are now buying up water. T. Boone Pickens has been acquiring water rights from farmers to sell to thirsty cities and towns. And Houston-based Enron Corp., formerly of Omaha, now has a water division. One of its managers says that "in the next 10 years, the United States will experience serious water shortages." Enron sees a global water industry worth $400 billion in the not too distant future, the manager said. All this puts Nebraska in a particularly sensitive position. Portions of the Ogallala Aquifer that lie below the Nebraska Sand Hills have been subjected to much less irrigation pressure than the aquifer's southern sections. Nebraska could very well have the potential to become, in the world of water, what Prudhoe Bay was to oil, or the Klondike to gold. The Kansas group and its dream of a pipeline to the Missouri provide a window to the future. As Denver and other mountain-state cities continue to grow all out of proportion to the carrying capacity of their environment, others see pipelines stretching into the Sand Hills and connecting to dozens of wells. Any step toward making that a reality would arouse serious concerns in Nebraska - concerns similar to those that flared in the 1970s when InterNorth Inc., the forerunner of Enron, proposed construction of a pipeline to carry slurried coal, using water from the Missouri River or a deep aquifer in northwest Nebraska, to the Gulf Coast area. And well it should raise concerns. If North America in general is headed for a water shortage, the last thing Nebraska needs is for out-of-state commercial interests or big cities to get a lock on supplies that Nebraska farms and cities need for their own survival. That's why even a water-rich state can't afford to be smug. On the other hand, something short of a lock may well be worth exploring. Some of Nebraska's neighbors have benefitted hugely from petroleum revenues. If water is indeed destined to become the "oil" of a new century, the state's policy-makers will have to be alert to a whole new range of possibilities, and not all of them negative. |
Summer water use in metro area Construction Progress Photos Water Plant Wellfield: |
