Personally, I'm not comfortable enough that we have good enough topographical data of that region to make the kind of definitive statements I saw in the article. I'd want to know more about the incidence angles and orbital geometries. The article left me with more questions than it answered.

I've never admitted to there being water ice at the poles, even though our tools strongly suggest such, because it could be in some other form, such as methane or some other vapourous hydrocarbon.

As I understand it the Sun's ray's strike at a very oblique angle at the poles, giving an ambient temperature of -40-50 degrees C and twilight lighting conditions in much of the region. Could it be that there's a migrating cloud that creeps out when not illumed, but then shrinks back into the shadows under the unbridled fury of the Sun's naked gaze? That's why you need the orbital geometry. The Moon does a lot of wiggling as it turns on its axis, and we have a very limited data set of illumination conditions.

Irrespective, there is hydrogen at the poles. Additionally, the's Moon crust is 40%+ oxygen chemically bound. The third ingredient is energy from power towers built on the rims, stretching upward in the 1/6th gravity to peek over the foreshortened horizon for a constant bath in the Sun's warm glow.

You can get water one way or another. If your plan relies on there being water ice then your plan deserves to fail, as this article implies that it would.

However, if we're going there to do other things, and set up permanent bases of operation, then yes, water ice would be an enormously useful asset. But I don't think we have sufficient data to be so certain one way or another.

(Now if we had the kind of data for the Moon that we have for Mars...then wow, we'd be ready to go in 2010!)