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T. Boone Pickens gets the Daniel Plainview treatment on the cover of this week's Business Week, in a story detailing the Dallas billionaire's quest to bring water from the Panhandle to Dallas at the cost of $100 million, give or take. Pickens, whose Mesa Power is already investing a couple billion in wind farms up in the Panhandle, figures water's the new oil -- which, notes the magazine, would make Pickens "a modern-day John D. Rockefeller," though I always thought being the current-day T. Boone Pickens was plenty enough for one man. So, here's the plan:
Pickens owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property... So far he has spent $100 million and eight years on his project and still has not found any city in Texas willing to buy his water.
He could always donate it. Then again, guess we ain't no O.S.U. --Robert Wilonsky
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