Okay, I know oil underground is your specialty, not water underground, but I'm curious if you've ever seen something similar with what's going on here in northeastern Nebraska.
Now, I'll have to make a couple of detours, so one has the historical perspective here.
Ever since being admitted as a state in 1890, South Dakota had always wanted a bridge across the Missouri River into Nebraska, at Yankton. Nebraska was never too keen about the idea, for good and sound reasons; there were ferries crossing the river, and the ferries seemed to work okay.
In 1928, South Dakota decided it would build the bridge itself, without any help from Nebraska.
The state of South Dakota purchased 30 acres of land in Nebraska, where the bridge would end, on the Nebraska side.
These 30 acres are still part of Nebraska, although owned by another state.
Well, the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl came, and then the second world war, and then the South Dakota ferryboat special interests, managed to delay construction of the bridge, for about 25 years.
The bridge was finally completed.
South Dakota still owned those 30 acres in Nebraska, and nobody paid any attention.
Until very recently.
Now the city of Yankton, South Dakota has decided they'd rather have Nebraska water, than Missouri River water.
If the newspapers have explained a complicated legal process correctly, apparently Nebraska is unusual among the states, in that a property owner in Nebraska owns his land clear down to the center, the core, of the earth.
It's not like Kansas, OKlahoma, and Texas (oil) or Montana (various minerals) or Pennsylvania (coal), where the property owner just owns the top of the ground, while someone else might own what's underneath the ground.
In Nebraska, one owns both the top of the ground, and whatever's under the ground.
So if South Dakota wants to drill for water in Nebraska, since South Dakota is the owner of those 30 acres, South Dakota can do so.
Okay, the other detour, before I get down to brass tacks.
In 1805, Nebraska was described by easterners as "the Great American Desert," uninhabitable by man.
What these same easterners didn't know was that just a few feet under their own feet, lay the world's largest reservoir of fresh water, a monstrous ocean of it, monstrously deep. So deep its actual depth to this day can't be determined. For all we know, it could be 2,000 or 3,000 miles deep, almost to the red-hot core of the earth.
Apparently there's more fresh water underneath Nebraska, than all the other fresh water in the world put together. Or so it's speculated.
By some freak of nature or Act of God, this underground ocean conforms nearly exactly with the pot-with-a-handle shape of Nebraska. It is almost entirely wholly underneath Nebraska.
And so it's Nebraska's water, just like the oil underneath Saudi Arabia is Saudi Arabia's.
While all that water may seem like plenty of water to share with everybody, Nebraskans, even the suave urbanites of Omaha and Lincoln, instinctively understand that to deplete that resource, is to dry up the state, making it truly uninhabitable for man, beast, and flora.
This is our water, and we'd just as soon not have to give any of it away.
The state of South Dakota and the city of Yankton want the water underneath their 30 acres because while even though the Missouri River provides Yankton with plenty of liquid, water from the Missouri River has to be treated (not for chemicals or sewage, but for sendiment), whereas water yanked out of Nebraska can go directly through to the taps of households and businesses.
This is because of the geological nature of Nebraska, and it ends right with the South Dakota border. The soil in north-central Nebraska is sandy, meaning that water from both the skies and the Missouri River, is naturally filtered of all impurities.
Step across the border into South Dakota, and right then and there, immediately the composition of the soil changes, to clay. And any water underneath that clay, besides being difficult to extract, has to be treated, because clay doesn't filter out impurities like sand does.
This is a hot issue, but because of property ownership rights in Nebraska, it looks as if both South Dakota and Yankton are going to get their way. They own those 30 acres, and so they also own everything underneath those 30 acres.
You might recall what happened to southern California, circa 100 years ago. Southern California at one time was an Eden, a paradise, because of all the water. But then the city fathers of Lost Angeles decided to steal it, and they stole every drop of it, rendering much of southern California into desert.
Now, Yankton, even though one of the largest cities in South Dakota, is no Lost Angeles, what with 13,000 people, and of course Nebraska has tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, times more water than California ever had.
Yankton pulls 6-7 million gallons a day from the Missouri River; they hope to pull 3-4 million gallons a day instead from Nebraska, and less from the Missouri River.
I wonder if we're going down a slippery slope here, allowing South Dakota to steal our water.
To those who might think, "oh, it's no big deal," well, that's a primitive way of thinking.
Nebraska--with all respect to Iowa, Illinois, and Kansas--is the breadbasket of the world.
Nebraska by itself could feed not only the whole United States, but all of North America and parts of other continents too, if agriculture were maximally utilized (at present, it is not; it is about 10% utilized).
The primitives are whining and complaining about high grocery bills (but oddly, not complaining about even higher credit-card interest, credit-card fees, credit-card penalties)--but if Nebraska becomes a desert, the primitives haven't seen anything yet; if Nebraska becomes a desert, a 99-cent bag of Cheetos would become a bargain at fifty bucks, and a McDonald's "Happy Meal" a bargain at $150.
And my fellow alum Skins, instead of holding fund-raisers to buy the elusive enigmatic Elad some more computer toys to "detect" moles, or to buy Lord Marblehead EarlG stuff that makes him stupid, Skins would be running fund-raisers to as to get Skinner Jr. a half-pint of skim milk once a week.
