“Wow.” Sometimes that’s all you can think to say when you read something like this. I recommend combing through the whole story so you can speak about it intelligently at your next cocktail party, but here’s the sum-up (excerpted and edited from the linked story by William Collier):
Apparently, in May of 2007, Nancy Pelosi invested in T. Boone Pickens‘ clean energy fuels corp., CLNE, which is the sole sponsor of a California proposal to funnel $5 billion in state funds and $5 billion in Federal funds to this corporation which will help CLNE create a giant wind farm in the Texas panhandle.
Notably, Pickens’ plan also involves the private control of water resources which Pickens wants to sell to big cities via giant pipelines built on land he seized under eminent domain. Pickens set up that deal by pushing through an 8 acre “water district” and then applying eminent domain to expand the district and grab more land from local ranchers.
The director of the Texas Sierra Club had this to say: “We have real concerns about private control of water… Water is a resource, yet in some respects it is a commodity. It’s as essential to human life as air. That puts water in a different class.”
Thank you, Kenneth Kramer, for that brilliant explanation of the importance of water.
Anyhoo, Pickens’ water district and distribution plan is opposed by water policy planners because extraction would affect natural spring flows in the rural Texas Panhandle communities that depend on that water. It would also adversely affect family farming and sustainable development from Texas to South Dakota.
Here’s the crux as it stands now: Pickens has not been able to find enough investors to pay for a $110 Billion bond he wants his new “water authority” to issue, SO he is now trying to piggy-back the windmill farm plan on to the water infrastructure development plan…so he can use the money obtained from the wind farms (some of which will be state and federal funds, i.e. taxpayer dollars) to pay for the water system infrastructure.
Clear as mud? He’s using his water district scheme to seize land and his windmill scheme to fund his water scheme. And you as a taxpayer are going to help pay for it! Aren’t you excited?!
And again, Pickens also has the financial and moral support of Nancy “I’m Trying to Save the World” Pelosi who purchased a large chunk of stock in CLNE on May 25, 2007 in the initial IPO. Be sure to contact Pelosi’s office to let her know how thrilled you are!
NOTE: Rob Neppell pointed out the following: the actual financial disclosure form
