In Deep Salty Water

The Albuquerque Journal's Sean Olson follows-up on news of the Puerco aquifer.  Massive energy costs are associated with desalinization.  Just how far does that fact deflate boosterism about the brackish water? 

Water consultant and former Metropolitan Water District of Southern California CEO Ronald R. Gastelum said the energy use won't be a big problem for desalination in New Mexico, as soon as a market opens for the technique.
        "I'm not foreseeing the availability of energy will be an issue or even the cost of energy will be an issue," said Gastelum, who is working as a consultant for SunCal. He added that it will definitely raise the cost of water.

 No, SunCal has bigger issues. 

What makes the idea of deep water drilling and treatment good, is just that - the idea of it.  Just the potential to continue on, repeating patterns of desert golf courses and auto dependent sprawl, enables the brokering in development to continue.  (Do brokers break?  Then we could call it flipping and breaking which sounds like rodeo - real estate rodeo!  I crack myself up.)

SunCal, SunCal partners and SunCal friends, (who are legion around here, elbowing and mad-dogging me in bars and skipping my house with the neighborhood luminarias), have much to be gained in nurturing the belief that the real estate market here in the Albuquerque area is very different than anywhere else.  Our reality is different.  Do you hear Twilight Zone music? 

The house across the street was for sale for several months.  There is a sold sign on it now.  But I suspect the broker bought it just to keep up the illusion of a strong market - for my benefit.  A fake family will move in soon, no doubt.

On a related note, maybe not, is the continued effort in Washington on the part of commercial real estate interests to get a piece of a bailout in anticipation of the hurt they'll feel.  Everywhere but here. From Clusterstock who got it from the WSJ:

Analysts estimate that from about 10% to 26% of all retailers are in financial distress and in danger of filing for Chapter 11. AlixPartners LLP, a Michigan-based turnaround consulting firm, estimates that 25.8% of 182 large retailers it tracks are at significant risk of filing for bankruptcy or facing financial distress in 2009 or 2010. In the previous two years, the firm had estimated 4% to 7% of retailers then tracked were at a high risk for filing.