LeakBird

For the first time ever, certain developments are being curtailed or slowed in California because there isn’t enough water to support them, reported The New York Times:

“The water in our state is not sufficient to add more demand,” said Lester Snow, the director of the California Department of Water Resources. “And that now means that some large development can’t go forward. If we don’t make changes with water, we are going to have a major economic problem in this state.”

“It’s too bad there’s not a Federal Reserve Water Bank that can just create more water out of thin air!” my fellow LeakBird associate Jordan Sudy said.

All of this followed on the heels of Governor Schwarzenegger’s declaration of drought in California on Wednesday, the first time in 17 years.  And on the same day, the mayor of Los Angeles and the Department of Water and Power Commissioners announced approval of a water conservation plan, an ordinance limiting citizens to 15 minutes of lawn-watering and restaurants to only serving water when customers ask for it.

Goldman Sachs released an eye-opening report, according to the Daily Telegraph, declaring that water problems “could be the world’s biggest risk“, easily outweighing oil and food problems, mainly because water is not only the backbone of industry and agriculture but health and well-being.  Of course, much of this is coming from the investor eye on the growing $425bn water industry:

Goldman Sachs advises investors to focus on the high-tech end of the world’s $425bn water industry. But beware the consumer “backlash” against bottled water, now viewed as an eco-hostile waste of fuel.

It is eyeing companies that produce or service filtration equipment (which can now extract anything from caffeine to animal growth hormones by using nanotechnologies), ultraviolet disinfection, desalination technology using membranes, automated water meters and specialist niches in water reuse.

So get ready for an onslaught of buyouts of and investments in all things high tech in the water sector, a trend already underfoot.

Future wars will be fought over water rights as opposed to oil rights, as water is already “the new battleground” in Spain:

This year, farmers are fighting developers over water rights. They are fighting one another over who gets to water their crops. And in a sign of their mounting desperation, they are buying and selling water like gold on a rapidly growing black market, mostly from illegal wells.

And perhaps one could argue that the biggest news of all, which didn’t make the headlines, was that two weeks ago in California AB2175 silently passed in the Assembly:

A bill that would require Californians to cut per-capita water use 20% by 2020 quietly passed in the Assembly last week, by a vote of 48 to 30.

Get ready to hear a lot more about this historic bill, and a lot more about water problems, because while there’s a lot of talking about going green, the lights are red, that is — our wells are going dry (at least on the water side, probably on the oil side as well).  And time will only tell how well the two — oil and water — economically mix, as prices soar at the pump as well as the faucet.

If you are interested in How You Can Increase Your Cash Flows by $2,500.00 Every Year and Never Pay for High Water Bills Due to Your Tenants’ Running Toilets, sign up for our Free Report here.

Abendigo Reebs is the VP of Business Development for LeakBird Industries LLC in San Francisco, CA. He may be reached by email at ben@leakbird.com

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