An article in the Smithsonian “Digging Ditches” seemed to take a liberal slant unnecessarily when discussing the buying up of water rights. Now of course we see the real problem of those buying up the water rights in NM, and South TX. One person interviewed had said “The practice of trading water as a commodity, is like selling sunshine” Although if you look closely they are talking about that too.

Our government has licensed the air for air travel to Lockheed, many other countries have done the same thing and now charge fees to fly over an island or through controlled airspace. Some airliners in the South Pacific now zig-zag to avoid paying fees and figure when the wind is right they save can afford the extra fuel. There is also talk of commoditizing the ocean so that another non-state governmental body will control the high seas, with rules and regulations to preserve the ocean from polluting, pirating and other abuses. The real problem with this is that the ocean is life, the air is life and the water is life. So if we are not careful we will hurt all people in the world and further the gap between wealthy nations and poor ones and rich and poor people too. Yet at the same time our politicians assure us that life is not for sale?

If people cannot afford to participate they lose in commerce, quality of life, food, water and health, causing more disparity and less chance for third world nations to become first world nations and thus disallow themselves to become customers of our corporations and even our company. This is bad because instead of developing new markets we are making the entire world market become smaller. This is bad. We have previously discussed this issue of the water in the South Western US, but it is affecting real people in an adverse way. I think the Smithsonian is a little too liberal in their total view of this issue, but did make some good points.

It will be interesting when we wash cars in these markets, as I am in the car wash business myself. UI have to wonder where we will get the water and for how much. And will we be using water that people need for crops, cattle, food and drink? If so we should revisit our water usage per car and get it to go down again by 40% in the next decade. Maybe we will also be in the water business.

Once a Border Patrol Officer from Laredo told me that he would be interested in one of our mobile car wash franchises but also wanted to have additional tanks on the trucks to haul in water, which he would sell when he was not washing cars. Interesting that the need is already there. As this years drought spreads and water brokers make huge profits including a couple of billionaires vying for rights and companies like Enron attempting and trading the commodity of life we will see increased dynamics of this issue. Perhaps it is time for Car Wash Guys to get into the loop so we have what we need to keep market share as we expand into those areas and all the car washes are shut down. Instead of digging ditches the article could have read Water is life and it is for sale. Think on this.