How Texas Could End Up Paying an Israeli Company Billions for Water
Water is the one resource Texas can't import, so handing the taps to a foreign private company deserves a long, hard look. IDE Technologies knows desalination, no question, they've built plants from the Mediterranean to California. But the structure of this deal is what bothers me. Public utilities can borrow at lower rates, answer to voters, and put the community's needs ahead of a shareholder dividend. A private operator answers to its investors first, and those investors are thousands of miles away.
The scale matters too. This wouldn't be a small pilot, it would be one of the largest water infrastructure projects in the country, and the bill would run into the billions. That money has to come from somewhere, and in Texas, that usually means ratepayers and local taxes. I'd want to see the contract terms, the price per acre-foot, the escalation clauses, and what happens if the plant underperforms or if a drought stretches for years.
I'm not saying private water is always wrong, some cities have made it work. But water is a public good, and once you hand it to a foreign corporation, you lose a measure of control that's very hard to get back. Texas is growing, the climate is drying, and every drop counts. This deserves far more scrutiny than it's getting.