Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Peeling the Barnett Shale Onion via FW Weekly, Plus Don Young Alert

Incoming alert from Don Young for those of us in the D/FW zone.

"Thursday night on WFAA-TV, Channel 8, reporter Brett Shipp delivers another hard hitting investigative report. This time covering the scandalous subject of injection wells and their polluting dangerous effects on the Texas environment."

Meanwhile this week's FW Weekly has an excellent article about the dangers of all this drilling going on for the first time in history in an urban zone, that being Fort Worth and surrounding areas.

The FW Weekly article is titled "Peeling the Barnett Shale Onion". The reporter is Peter Gorman.

Here's an excerpt....

When a natural gas pipeline blew outside the little Central Texas town of Stairtown on Aug. 28, fire officials more than 10 miles from the blast site said they could feel the explosion. And hair went up on thousands of necks in Fort Worth, more than 200 miles away.

“That was a 36-inch gas pipe that blew,” said Gary Hogan, a member of the Fort Worth Gas Drilling Task Force, which is trying to find ways to make Barnett Shale activity in Fort Worth safer for people and the environment. “We’ve got 36-inch gas pipes running all over the place under the city, and we’re going to have a lot more soon. I don’t want to think about what that would have meant if it had happened here.”

As it was, the explosion, in a rural area, hurt no one. But the same explosion, occurring in downtown Fort Worth, would have been devastating. So would any of the dozens of other gas well and pipeline explosions that have rocked Texas in the last year. It was just one more grim piece of the education that North Texans have been getting, lesson after troubling lesson, since those first drilling company reps showed up on local doorsteps a few years ago, waving money and contracts.

Go here to read the entire article...

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