T. Boone Pickens graced the Texas panhandle with a visit last week.

For those who don't know, Pickens is an oil multimillionaire (or billionaire; I don't keep up with the Forbes list). His latest venture: buying water rights from anybody that will sell them.

For the moment, Pickens intends to send the water to San Antonio, but it doesn't take a genius to realize he will sell to the highest bidder. That means that soon much of the Texas panhandle's water will be diverted to Nevada, Arizona, and Southern California, all of whom have been clamoring for water rights anywhere they can get them, and ALL of whom have a crisis due to gross mismanagement of their natural resources.

The Texas panhandle is NOT an area of abundant water. Most of the surface creeks are dry, and water levels at area lakes are at near all time lows due to farmers upstream diverting the precious resource for irrigation and livestock. Pickens' latest venture stands to further drain thie precious resource from an area that needs it. The land here is extremely inexpensive to begin with; future landowners will be further deterred by the fact that the land comes without water rights.

Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and other southwestern cities definitely need water; there's no doubt about that. But until Las Vegas stops builcing casinos with elaborate fountains, manmade lakes and canals, and until these cities have effective greywater reclamation systems and desalinization plants (hello? Last I checked,Los Angeles IS on the coast), then the rest of the nation has little to no obligation to bail them out of this mess. And CERTAINLY not at the cost of other regions' natural resources.