I live near a road in Fort Worth called Randol Mill Road. Randol Mill Road meanders all over the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. At one point in time there must have been a business called the Randol Mill, with a lot of roads leading to it.Back when I first moved to my current location, at that point in time, where Randol Mill Road is met by Oakland Boulevard, there was a baseball field complex on the north side of Randol Mill.
And then a few years ago Chesapeake Energy began its Blitzkrieg on Fort Worth and Tarrant County. Eventually, the Chesapeake Blitzkrieg hit the ballfields at Oakland & Randol Mill.
After the ballfields and ballfield buildings were obliterated, Chesapeake Energy buildings began to appear, growing into a large complex.A short time ago I was heading east on Randol Mill when I came upon a sign warning me that some street cleaning was taking place. What's making the road dirty, I wondered? And then I saw the Blitzkrieg army of trucks driving on to and out of the Chesapeake property, bringing with them a lot of dirt and mud, which is what the street cleaning was cleaning up.
This went on for days. The muddy street business. I was curious what was going on behind those closed Chesapeake doors.
So, I positioned a satellite into place and took some pictures. In the first one, at the top, you can see where Oakland Boulevard meets Randol Mill at the lower right. Across the street you see the area Chesapeake has commandeered. You can see the Trinity River meandering around the Chesapeake property. Let's move in for a closer look.
You can see several manmade ponds of various sizes and color. What is in these ponds, one can not help but wonder? Is this what those trucks were bringing in? Water to pump in these ponds? Or were the trucks taking water out of the ponds?
As you can see, in this close-up of one of the ponds, it appears to be heavily fortified with a thick lining, which again can't help but cause one to wonder what is in that pond. And what is in the little pond to the right?Who monitors these ponds to make sure they are not leaking into the Trinity River? Anyone?
Don't know of anyone monitoring. It might be possible to take samples of Trinity water at Beach, and then at 820 to get a before and after.
ReplyDeleteI don't suppose anyone warns migratory birds, or the big waterbirds that hang out at the river and Oakland Lake, that this stuff is not conducive to flying to Canada. And these ponds are probably not subject to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act anymore:
On January 9, 2001 the US Supreme Court in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook Cty. v. Army Corps of Engineers threw out the “Migratory Bird Rule,”[3] A case that pitted a consortium of towns around Chicago, Illinois over isolated wetlands, inhabited or visited by over 100 migratory bird species, against the US Army Corps of Engineers. In this case, Skokie, Illinois wanted abandoned quarries filled with water, but not connected to another or navigable body of water to serve as a site for a solid waste facility. For the previous 15 years lower courts had sustained the rule in favor of migratory birds, siding with the Army Corps.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migratory_bird_rule
Anyone close to the Audubon folks?
Located in this compound is the only drilling waste "injection well" inside of FW. From the looks of the pictures these are hazardous cocktails of water and other substances that constitute "waste water" --or what the drilling industry euphemistically, and misleadingly, call "salt water". I'd look for dead or dying life forms near and around those ponds. Hefty cows had keeled over and died after tasting such "frack water" in the Louisiana side of the TX-LA border not too long ago. Definitely don't drink it--or even swim in it, Durango.
ReplyDeleteProduced or disposal water from fracturing natural gas wells is in those ponds. Produced water evaporation ponds they are called and they should be covered to keep migratory waterfowl out of that toxic stew.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they have had any incidents of birds landing in the water and dying? Mallard Cove park is nearby. Just thinking out loud. Also, are these ponds included in the official Chesapeake coloring books?
I just Googled this and I'm learning more about it than I ever wanted to know.