A number of people are questioning the reasons behind the Pickens Plan. The Zaproot video (right) is the first time I’ve seen it claimed that the plan is really nothing more than an attempt to green wash a business plan that is pretty unfriendly to the environment, and has been met with quite a bit of resistance.

The claim Zaproot is making is that the real reason Pickens is pushing his wind farm plan is to cover up the environmental damage that Mesa Water, one of his companies, would cause by draining the ground water from 200,000 acres of land in Roberts County, Texas and piping it to western Texas.

Eminent Domain
The story goes something like this:

First, Pickens’ company, Mesa Water, buys up water rights to the largest aquifer in the US. But not everybody is that into the plan and some refuse to sell to him. To get around this, with help from some friendly politicians, he sets up a water district allowing him to use eminent domain to force the sale of the land he can’t get. Unfortunately for Pickens, even that didn’t work – there was still a lot of resistance to the plan.

Here’s where it gets interesting. According to the folks at Zaproot, the next thing Pickens does is put forward an amendment to a Texas bill that would allow the building of a pipeline alongside a power transmission line. And then we hear about the plan that will free the US from its dependency on oil. How? By creating a massive wind farm, starting in the very same area that his pipeline needs to pass through.

Green or Not?
So, is the Pickens plan a true attempt to get the US using more renewable energy, or is it just a ruse to get away with the creation of a water pipeline that would probably have dire consequences for the environment? At least Pickens has worked out that oil is not the way forward. Problem is that he might not really believe in wind power either.

The plan to use more wind power in the US is certainly good; hopefully nobody will fall for the trick of pairing it with a very eco-unfriendly water pipeline (that said, there’s so much of that in US politics that I’d be surprised if it didn’t happen).

As I mentioned in my previous post about the Pickens Plan, I think there are some good ideas in there, but it is not the best that could be achieved. And this doubt about the motives for the wind farm make me even more convinced that we need to come up with a better plan; one that is not subject to doubts about its motives.

[Via CleanTechnica]

Tags: mesa water, pickens, wind, zaproot

Posted in Energy, Political | Comment RSS
Respond | Trackback | Share this: