Water As A Traded Commodity

From the nc links, FT Alphaville highlights a William Buitler essay on water:

I expect to see a globally integrated market for fresh water within 25 to 30 years. Once the spot markets for water are integrated, futures markets and other derivative water-based financial instruments — puts, calls, swaps — both exchange-traded and OTC will follow. There will be different grades and types of fresh water, just the way we have light sweet and heavy sour crude oil today. Water as an asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals.

That is definitely interesting.  It makes the debate about withdrawals from Lake Erie more significant.  It also makes Dayton's buried valley aquifer more valuable as a resource.  I think it is interesting that discussions of China's South-North Water Transfer Project don't automatically bring up California's large aqueduct projects.  Those are pretty large-scale.