own
Texas has some wonderful laws: when you own the land you can pump out as much groundwater from underneath as you want. Comes really handy when your land is arid but you desire to grow some water thirsty lettuce or pecan trees. If that dries wells of your neighbors so be it. It’s about who has the biggest pump after all.
Or when you don’t feel like farming at all, you can simply find a city in need of water and export water from the desert. Just invest in a diesel pump and some piping and the money will flow your way. Ingenious, huh?It doesn’t hurt to have a river or a stream flowing through your land. Just make sure you are upstream. In the case there are too many claims you have a better chance to use the water before the river dries up downstream.
Once you acquire a ranch you can use it as you please. First cut the few remaining trees for lumber, then start raising cattle. When they eat all the grass, move onto goats. They will clear the vegetation real good leaving only creosote bush behind. Overgrazing is not against the law in Texas.
At this point you can prospect for ore and oil - there is a good chance you’ll find one or the other. With oil you’ll put few rigs and crisscross the surrounding terrain with roads to haul it out. If you discovered ore then you simply start digging here and there. Et voilá, in a few short years you’ve turned arid but green ranch into a desert. As an owner you are perfectly within your rights to do so.
I like that: nobody, not even the state, can curtail my right to turn my property into my wasteland. Freedom at its finest. I wonder why I haven’t moved to Texas yet.
