WATER ABLAZE - Patagonia Sin Represas

3.2 The Search for New Sources – Some Crazy Notions
Eccentric attempts are being made all over the world to offset the
impending water shortage. Plans exist, for example, to transport water
from Canada to parched California by means of gigantic pipelines. There
is also the concept of river-linking or interlinking which would divert rivers
on a large scale. In Spain, authorities were considering branching off
the 927-kilometre-long River Ebro into artificial canals with an overall
length of 900 kilometres, in order to supply the South of the country
and other areas with water. The project was abandoned in summer
2004 after massive protests.
Since the 1980s, similar plans have been underway in India to link
almost all major rivers, including the Ganges and the Brahmaputra,
so that water from the Himalayas could be distributed via navigable
canals. The estimated cost of the project stands at $12 billion but
it still remains to be seen whether or not it will actually go ahead.
Environmentalists are putting up considerable resistance because of
the severe ecological damage which would result, not to mention all
the problems faced by those who would have to be resettled.
Likewise in India, a 23-kilometre-long stretch of the River Shenoath
was sold in 1998. The private operating company Radius Water Ltd.
acquired a licence allowing it to supply water to industrial enterprises
on both sides of the river. Violent clashes broke out because the
company chased away local farmers when they came to fetch their
water from the river, just as they had always done. This private deal
had to be called off in April 2003.
Tankers provide another means of transporting large quantities of
water. The U.S. company Flow Incorporated, based in Charleston,
South Carolina, is planning to fill the ballast tanks of large oil tankers,
carrying oil from the Middle East to the USA, with water on their
homeward voyage. It is the company’s intention to develop a thriving
new branch of the water industry and to set up a “World Water
Organisation” in accordance with its own vision.
Tube wells are another method used to access good water, but these
wells have to be sunk deeper and deeper, sometimes to a depth of
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