Fort Worth's Air Is Kept Clean Because No Mountains Allows The Bad Air To Blow To Oklahoma

That is a smoggy look at the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Fort Worth, looking west from the equally stunning Tandy Hills. Don Young took this photo on Monday.

I'll copy Don Young's commentary, which accompanied this photo, below. And below that I'll copy a letter to the editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, with an idiotic point of view on the same subject, and then below that I'll opine on this subject...

Today, I received from State Representative Lon Burnam's office, a list of 79 new gas drilling permits filed with the Texas Railroad Commission for Tarrant County, Texas. That is, 79, for the month of March, alone.

Today was also a fairly warm day with temps reaching 82 degrees. Higher temps and gas well emissions are not a good combo as you can see by these photos taken near downtown Fort Worth today at 6:30 PM CST. Just wait until July rolls around.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Fort Worth, whose income depends on gas drilling, recently announced the creation of a task force to try and figure out if gas drilling is a contributing factor to our compromised air. Gas drillers say that the air is actually CLEANER since drilling began in Fort Worth. They are also well-represented on the task force.

Feel better?

DY

The letter to the editor...

Fort Worth's air quality

It appears that a limited number of people are deeply concerned about the quality of air over Fort Worth because of gas drilling operations.

Fort Worth is fortunate that it is not boxed in by surrounding mountains and the air is free to move as nature directs. In fact, when there is a comfortable south wind blowing, the air that is over Fort Worth at sunrise is swirling in the Wichita Mountains near Lawton, Okla., at sunset.

Seems like a small number of people are doing a lot of worrying over a whole lot of nothing.

-- Warren C. Arthur, Fort Worth

Okay, Warren thinks Fort Worth's air is kept clean because Mother Nature blows the pollution elsewhere, like to Oklahoma?

Well, I'm thinking, since Texas and the Tarrant Regional Water Board are wanting to sue Oklahoma to get some of Oklahoma's water, that Oklahoma might want to consider suing Texas over that bad air Texas is sending to Oklahoma.

Fort Worth's air is kept clean because Fort Worth has the misfortune, I mean the fortune, of not being surrounded by mountains? Let's see, let me think if I can think of a place I've lived in with cleaner air than Fort Worth? Seattle, yeah, that's one. And Seattle is surrounded by mountains. Mountains on all sides, north, south, east and west. Same with Vancouver. Denver has a big wall of mountains to the west. All way less polluted, air-wise, that the Barnett Shale zone of Texas.

The air pollution blows away? And yet for some reason 25% of Barnett Shale air breathing kids suffer from asthma, while outside the Barnett Shale zone of Texas that percentage drops to 7.

Warren says, "Seems like a small number of people are doing a lot of worrying over a whole lot of nothing."

Instead, it seems to me, a sadly small number of people are doing a lot of worrying over something big, when that number of people worrying should be large.