Fort Chesapeake's Gate Was Wide Open So I Walked Inside

Water Flowing Past The Open Gate Of
Fort Chesapeake

I mentioned earlier that last night I saw an odd thing at my neighborhood Chesapeake Energy Barnett Shale Natural Gas Drilling Site that I call Fort Chesapeake.

That odd thing was the gate to the pad site was wide open.

I thought maybe Chesapeake had someone staying on the site 24 hours a day. I told myself I'd find out in the morning.

Well.

The gate was still wide open this morning. I did not want to walk into the drill pad site until I checked to see if there was any sign of life inside the walls of Fort Chesapeake.

Looking Inside Fort Chesapeake From The
Loop 820 Vantage Point

So, I walked to the side of the site that faces the Loop 820 freeway. No wall blocks the view from this side.

As you can see via the view from the wall-less east side of the pad site, there is no sign of human activity inside the walls of Fort Chesapeake.

An unsecured Fort Chesapeake gas drilling site with a well at its center. An unprotected well.

After determining that Fort Chesapeake was unguarded I walked back to the open gate.

In the above photo I am standing where the gate should be. As you can see, some of our precious, dwindling supply of Trinity River water is leaking from the pipes. This seemed odd to me, because the pipes are not fully installed, near as I could tell. And the fracking is not yet happening, as you can see on the sign below.

The sign says "Frac Job Will Begin 1-10-12". That is tomorrow. It will be interesting to see what volume of leaking occurs when the fracking happens. Now that we know when the fracking starts, let's continue our look inside the open gate.

I only walked inside the walls of Fort Chesapeake for a few feet. I felt way too exposed to too many eyes. That bump in the middle of the picture, to the right of the red train car looking box, is the point where the ground has been poked into which the fracking water will be injected. It is currently totally unsecured. I could have easily walked up to it and turned a valve, if there was a valve to be turned.

Above is a view of the leaky pipes, west of Fort Chesapeake, heading north towards the Trinity River. How is permission granted to run 3 pipes across some of which I do not believe is land owned by Chesapeake Energy? That is a storage unit business on the right, Havenwood Apartments on the left.