Closeup Look At Chesapeake Energy's Tandy Hills Natural Destruction

As long as I've been paying attention to Chesapeake Energy's public relations machine, it has always seemed so bizarre to me that someone like myself, who really does not have all that much contact with what Chesapeake Energy is up to, finds himself seeing so many contradictions between how Chesapeake Energy describes what they are doing. And what they actually do.

For example, until Chesapeake Energy went into operation across the street from where I live, I did not realize that all the complaints about noise and dust weren't just some whiny person with a delicate constitution getting all upset due to a little dust and noise.

Instead, I was to learn that it is VERY noisy. And the dust is more like airborne mud that gets on everything. Did Chesapeake send anyone through the neighborhood to offer car washes and new filters for our cars and air conditioner units? No. They did not. We were covered in dust, as if we lived next to a cement plant and nothing was done about the pollution or the polluters.

From that point on I become a shrill anti-Chesapeake Energy shill.

And then there's the case of my beloved Tandy Hills. Chesapeake Energy bought a plot of land in the Tandy Hills. Those who see what a great recreational resource Tandy Hills represents were mortified that this rogue defiler of the land was going to do drilling in the Tandy Hills.

Well, Chesapeake Energy assured the public that the area affected would be very small, that little damage would be done to the Tandy Hills. It was not long into the operation when it became obvious that the area affected was huge and the damage done to the Tandy Hills was enormous.

Last Monday, returning from Zorro's Buffet via Interstate 30, heading east back to here, I went by the Tandy Hills Chesapeake Energy operation and saw it from the freeway for the first time. It is appalling how it looks from the freeway. A total flattening of the landscape with huge berms and drainage ditches.

When I saw how bad it looked I decided I'd figure out how to get a picture of the view from that perspective. It took a rather adventurous hike, where no trails existed, to get to the freeway and the vantage point I wanted. The sun was in an unfortunate location, so the photos did not turn out all that great. But you still get a real good idea of how Chesapeake Energy has turned this part of the Tandy Hills Natural Area into something very unnatural.