With Limited Visibility I Took A Foggy Walk In My Neighborhood In Search Of FW Weekly's 2013 Turkey Awards

To the left you are looking west, past the iron spears which form a barrier protecting me from possible onslaughts of intruders, at the massive fog bank which is currently covering much of North Texas and rendering impossible seeing any of the snow capped mountain peaks which would be visible, if they existed, on a clear blue sky day at this particular location.

The temperature is currently 68 degrees, well above the freeze that is scheduled for the coming days.

With the temperature in the 60s, this morning, when I had my regularly scheduled swim, I had myself a fairly fine time in a not too cool pool. With two heat up bouts in the hot tub.

Rather than drive anywhere for my daily nature walk I decided to take one of my semi-regularly scheduled walking surveys of my neighborhood, with Albertsons as my destination so as to acquire this week's FW Weekly 2013 Turkey Awards edition.

I have not yet looked to see who won this year's coveted FW Weekly Turkey Awards. I can make some guesses. Jim Oliver comes to mind.

Before I left my abode to seek FW Weekly I saw that my sister who lives in Chandler, Arizona had been to my Eyes on Texas website where she clicked on the link to this very blog you are reading now.

I had not talked to my Arizona sister since she returned from Trick or Treating in Tacoma, so I called.

No answer.

I'd not called my mom and dad for over a week, so, even though I had not gotten gas, I called.

No answer.

I hope this means mom and dad are out and about having themselves some fun. And not at a doctor's office.

I Am Not Downloading The Fort Worth Star-Telegram's DFW OT App For My I-Pad

I don't know why I got email from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram today. I ceased being a subscriber years ago. I understand why I got email from the Fort Worth Library today, because I still subscribe to that service.

The email from the Star-Telegram was announcing the introduction of something called DFW OT. With DFW OT apparently being DFW's first and only digital sports magazine for the iPad.

It appears Tony Romo is the cover cowboy on the first issue of DFW OT. Tony Romo is the quarterback for the local football team called the Dallas Cowboys, which is expected to win the Super Bowl this year.

What I am wondering is did it not cost the Fort Worth Star-Telegram any money to produce DFW's first and only digital sports magazine?

One really can not help but wonder why a newspaper which has shrunk considerably since I first saw it over a decade ago and which is known to be struggling to survive, money-wise, would invest in an electronic publication that runs on a device that is not a device the majority of people use.

I read in this week's FW Weekly in an article titled More Jumping Ship that more Star-Telegram employees are jumping ship. The most recent ship jumper is the Star-Telegram's business columnist, Mitchell Schnurman, who left Fort Worth for Dallas and that town's Morning News.

Maybe DFW OT will be a big money maker that saves the sinking ship. Maybe not. I don't think I'll be getting this app for my iPad.

The Trinity River Vision's J.D. Granger Wins A Coveted FW Weekly 2011 Turkey Award

J.D. Granger Wins Coveted FW Weekly
2011 Turkey Award

If I remember right, last month I mentioned going to a TRIP sponsored forum at Fort Worth's Botanic Garden.

J.D. Granger was scheduled to be on the forum panel, but panicked and cancelled at the last minute. This news was greeted with loud booing when it was announced to the assembled forum goers.

This week's week before Thanksgiving edition of FW Weekly is the 2011 Turkey Awards issue.

J.D. Granger won one of the coveted Turkey Awards.

This is what FW Weekly had to say by way of explaining why J.D. deserved this coveted award in the cover article title "The Big Bird".....

Last month, the Trinity River Improvement Partnership (TRIP) sponsored a forum at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden to discuss the merits of the $900 million Trinity River Vision project and ask questions about where that money will come from, what the justification for the project is, and what it has to do with flooding and water quality issues. About 125 people showed up, but it was one person missing that stirred the ire of the citizens. J. D. Granger, executive director of TRV, had promised to sit on the panel and give direct answers to those important questions. But at the last minute, he cancelled. The only one to show up on the “pro-TRV” side was a gutsy Jim Lane, a board member of the Tarrant Regional Water District. Lane did his best to answer some of the questions, but the water district is handling only part of the project. The reason given for Granger’s backpedaling was that he realized the event would involve discussing policy, and, shucks, he’s just the hired hand (although he’d known about the format of the event for weeks). But the fact is that Granger is in charge and is one of the few people who can sort out where this multi-agency project is going. Canceling at the last minute just doesn’t cut it. Maybe voters should drop him from their holiday invitation list. Oh, wait. That’s right. He’s not an elected official.

Hiking Among The Tandy Hills Prickly Pear Cactus Thinking About Being Up A Creek With TRV MHMR SFRF FWW & Other Initials

In the picture you are with me today around noon, face to face with a patch of prickly pear cactus prickling up the Tandy Hills.

It was a perfect hiking temperature today, with a strong wind blowing.

This morning's swim was also perfect with the water warmer than the air.

I've been a blogging/websiting maniac today, on my blogs and other blogs, that are sort of like my secret secondary blogs.

I think all the commenting on the Paradise Center Scandal Blog is the most of that type activity I've experienced since years ago when I inadvertently caused myself the Scarborough Faire Renaissance Festival Brouhaha of over the top silly reaction.

The Scarborough Brouhaha was pretty much silly nonsense. The Paradise Center Scandal brouhaha is not something silly, it's something serious that sort of is like a boil on the festering sore that is the dark side of the Fort Worth Way of how the city and county government operate, with little accountability and zero transparency.

Meanwhile, on a brighter note, FW Weekly has an excellent article about Tarrant County's fiesty firebrand, Layla Caraway, and her multi-year battle to get Fort Worth and Tarrant County to wake up and face the water.

Read "TRV's Up a Creek: As the Trinity River moves right along, local communities still aren't  safe from floods" in this week's FW Weekly, the closest thing Fort Worth has to a real newspaper.

Fort Worth's Corrupt, Incompetent School Superintendent Melody Johnson's Mishandling Of The Joe Palazzolo Whistleblower Scandal

If I remember right I think I have mentioned before that I live in an area of America where insanity is the norm. Well, more accurately, where insanity is accepted as normal. Where right gets turned wrong. And, where, even when what is right, is clearly clear, wrong prevails.

No, I am not talking about the fashion faux pas of Texas Big Hair as demonstrated by the woman in the photo.

The woman in the photo is yet one more person in Fort Worth who clearly is not competent to do the job she has been hired to do.

The woman's name is Melody Johnson. She is the Superintendent of Fort Worth Schools.

As long as I have been in Fort Worth there have been  tales of corruption in the Fort Worth school system.

Arlington Heights High School assistant principal, Joe Palazzolo, went to his superiors, including Superintendent Johnson, to report some serious wrongdoing occurring at Arlington Heights High School

The Whistleblower, Palazzolo, became the problem, in Ms. Johnson's and her fellow corrupt lackey's eyes. Palazzolo was gradually marginalized til he no longer had a job.

There are laws that protect whistleblowers from retaliation from those about whom the whistle was blown. Those laws are now in play. How well this works in Texas, I have no idea.

FW Weekly has once more performed extremely well in its role as Fort Worth's only actual legitimate newspaper, doing actual real investigative journalism. Unlike the Fort Worth Star-Telegram which pretty much acts as the mouthpiece for the local stoolies in various positions of power.

If you want a good dose of the extreme madness that passes for Fort Worth's adults in positions of power, read this week's Fort Worth Weekly article about the Joe Palazzolo Scandal.

If this was a town where sanity was in the majority, Ms. Melody Johnson would have been fired, by now, over this scandal. If this were a town were sanity was in the majority, someone with Ms. Melody Johnson's Big Hair would never have been hired as a school superintendent.

Does anyone know if Melody Johnson is another Kay Granger relative?

UPDATE: Reading Anonymous Comment #2 causes me to think this Joe Palazzolo Scandal may not be quite as black and white as I thought it to be from reading it described in FW Weekly.

Steve Doeung Will Not Pipe Down & This Is A Good Thing For Fort Worth & America

Great article in Fort Worth's only "real" newspaper, as in a newspaper that does not act as a propaganda shill for the local corrupt power structure, with its incestuous Conflicts of Interest relationships with the Barnett Shale natural gas drilling industry.

I'm talking about FW Weekly and its cover article, "He Won't Pipe Down," about Steve Doeung and his heroic battle against Fort Worth's corrupt government and one of the agents of corruption, Chesapeake Energy and its chief hoodlum, Aubrey McClendon.

Steve Doeung may have become an American via being a Cambodian first, but he's an American now, an All-American of the heroic, brave, idealistic, champion sort that has made America what it is, as in the most powerful nation, in most of the ways that matter, that the world has ever seen.

I'm thinking there has to be a way to have Steve's Story and the Battle of Carter Avenue go national, so all Americans know what's going on here in Fort Worth, where border-line Gestapo-like fear tactics have been used, with the full cooperation of Fort Worth's corrupt government and police, to intimidate the people of Carter Avenue, except for one.

I'm thinking Steve's Story and the Battle of Carter Avenue would make a good 60 Minutes story.

I contacted 60 Minutes about 20 years ago. I was greatly annoyed at the shocking revelations that had come out regarding the capital of British Columbia, Canada, Victoria, pumping raw sewage deep into the Straits of Juan de Fuca. That was the Victoria sewage treatment method. Vancouver's was not much better.

The State of Washington tried all sorts of things to get the Canadians to clean up their act. Promises were made. Nothing was done. Monkey Wrenchers, a type of American that apparently does not exist in Texas, did things like book a stay in an expensive Victoria hotel and rather than use the toilet, they'd leave a mess behind in the bathtub, along with messages on the walls. I don't recollect how many instances of that type Monkey Wrenching occured.

Washington people were peeved at the Canadians because Washington voter's had approved a bond in the late 60s that spent a lot of money cleaning up water flowing into Washington lakes and Puget Sound and the Straits of Juan de Fuca. And then you had the Canadians sort of defeating the purpose by continuing to dirty the water that salmon swam through.

I believe all these years later the Canadians have finally cleaned up their sewage problem. Not due to any expose on 60 Minutes. but because they feared, with the about to happen Vancouver Winter Olympics, that a fresh burst of bad publicity about the bad Canadian hygienne would be most unfortunate.

Now, how can we shine a similar light, from the outside, on Fort Worth, a light so bright it causes the cockroaches, like Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief and Chesapeake Energy's Aubrey McClendon, to run for the dark, where they need to remain?

George W. Bush Final Primetime TV Interruption

In less than an hour, America's Primetime Television airwaves will be interrupted for the final time by George W. Bush. I may watch. I may not. I may forget.

This week's FW Weekly has an interesting article about George and his legacy. That's the cover of this week's FW Weekly on the left, with George in a cowboy hat. You probably could have figured that out for yourself.

Go here to read the FW Weekly article. It'll likely only be readable for a week, replaced next week by next week's feature article. So, if you are reading this past January 21, you likely won't be seeing this particular article about George W.

George W. Bush. I remember back in 1998, in the month of May, coming to Texas to see if there was any remote chance I wanted to move here. We'd been to the Stockyards, came back, the TV was on. An ad came on. There was the Governor of Texas, seeming smarmy, about what, I do not remember.

When the chatter started up about George W. running for President I did not take it serious. I remember saying, "there is no way he can be the Republican candidate, all the Democrats would have to do is show the rest of America all the bad stuff in Texas and proclaim, do you really want George W. Bush to do to all of America what he's done to Texas."

Little did I know how prophetic my words were.

Some time back I remember reading someone somewhere write that Texas is to America what America has become to the rest of the World. In that a lot of the world sees America as too full of itself, too cowboy, too loud, too sure of itself, too cocky, too unaware that there are other parts of the world where freedom rings, where people live well, where proud cultures thrive. Where they know the American Way is not the only way.

Before George W. Bush tarnished America in the World's eyes we were seen by the vast majority of the World as the World's brightest light. America dominates the World as no culture before has. Before George W., this domination was in a good way.

Today, not so much.

Beginning in about 5 days, I suspect America will be back being the America the World, for the most part, loves. Daring to go where no other nation has gone before. America using its power for good, to make the World a better place. America with a leader the World looks to with hope and admiration and awe.

It's been a long long long 8 years.

In all my decades on the planet this is the first time I've found myself totally discounting and despising my President. George W. is a man who should never have had the keys to the Oval Office. That is obvious now. It will be obvious 20 years from now.

It pleases me, that it is likely George W. will live long enough to realize that his hope that history will treat him better than the current times, turned out to be erroneous. Like pretty much everything else he thought to be true.

The Idiots Will Always Be Among Us

Maybe one day in the distant future natural selection will have weeded all the ignorant idiots out of the collective gene pool. But til that happens, we are stuck with them.

Earlier in the week I had a day of getting very bizarre ignorantly idiotic comments about a blog I'd written months ago. There was something very disturbingly off about this person and his comments.

I don't get a lot of up close and personal contact with idiocy, ignorance or bigotry, so I was a bit surprised at an accounting of some local idiocy, ignorance and bigotry in this week's FW Weekly, idiocy, ignorance and bigotry that I fear may not be localized to Fort Worth, but may be a nationwide outbreak of fresh idiocy, ignorance and bigotry.

The FW Weekly article I'm talking about is the Second Thought column of the Wednesday, November 12 issue. The title is "Surviving Their Raising." The writer is E.R. Bills who tells of some local bigotry witnessed by Bills' children. I was appalled.

I'll copy the column below, I don't think FW Weekly archives their Second Thought columns, so the point made by E.R. Bills can live on here til this Blog dies.

Surviving Their Raising

Could we make this the last generation of racists?

By E.R. BILLS

A few weeks back, a 7th-grader who hangs around the neighborhood told my kids that Barack Obama was a stupid Muslim terrorist and that if that “nigger” got elected he and his family were moving to Canada.

A week ago, my 10-year-old daughter related the new joke going around her elementary school: What’s the difference between Obama and Simba? Simba is an African lion and Obama is a lyin’ African.

And the day after the election, in a high-school lunch line, a sulky-looking kid standing behind my 15-year-old son was asked by a friend what was wrong. “There’s a nigger in the White House now,” he said. “Yeah, I know,” the girl replied. “I don’t like him either.”

As a parent of mixed-race children, I find the ignorance inherent in these sentiments offensive. I would find it just as revolting if my kids were white, Hispanic, or of any other ethnic background. But I’m not upset with the children who parrot such ideas. I’m unhappy with their parents.

Teenagers are not genetically predisposed to use ugly racial slurs. That kind of prejudice starts at home. Ten-year-olds don’t independently question a politician’s integrity or sit up thinking of ways to mock half of his ethnicity. And young middle-school students don’t instinctively suspect Obama is a Muslim or equate that with being a terrorist. It’s something they get from Mom or Dad — from the language routinely used at home, or the jokes repeated there, or the attitudes that, subtlely or overtly, the grown-ups at home display in dealing with other people.

The “trickle-down” theory of economics may have proven to be a terrible blunder, but the moniker itself is solid. It’s simply misapplied.

Wealth doesn’t trickle down, but ignorance sure does.

If a child’s parents are members of the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nation or are simply active, vocal racists, chances are that child will absorb those repugnant ideologies and learn to discriminate against ethnic minorities. If a child’s father hangs out on street corners holding up signs that say “God Hates Fags,” the chances of that child becoming a homophobic bumpkin who is afraid of gay marriage increase exponentially. If Mom and Dad are shallow, xenophobic neocons who mock anyone the talk radio jocks tell them they should feel threatened by or disagree with, little Timmy is much more inclined to denigrate people who make him uncomfortable or who have different political opinions.

Hate breeds hate. So many of the evils that plague our nation — racism, sexism, homophobia, and general narrowmindedness — are passed down from grandparents to parents to kids like family pictures or precious heirlooms.

Hence, ignorance and cruelty continually dim our collective future. American poet Anne Sexton put it best: “Live or die, but don’t poison everything.”

If you’re so eaten up with hate and fear that you can’t abide the skin color or free will or liberty of others, that’s your prerogative. But please, do us all a favor and keep it to yourself.

No offense, but the world might be a better place if the chains of which you are a link were broken — not to mention the chains you’d like to see the rest of us wrapped in. If we could stop stuffing our children like Thanksgiving turkeys with our preconceived notions and prejudices, they might grow up to figure things out for themselves.

Trust me, as a fellow parent: For my children and yours, life is too short to make them spend years trying to transcend our follies. Let’s allow them a fresh start, a clean slate. And who knows, one of our kids might grow up to be president someday.

Un Well In This Week's FW Weekly

I've not seen this week's FW Weekly yet, but always on the ball, Don Young has. He sent me a link to a very good article in the current issue in the Metropolis section written by Peter Gorman.

One of the victims in this story, Jim Ashford, lives in my neighborhood, in Riverbend Estates. I've heard the noise that's made him ill.

I don't think FW Weekly archives the articles in their Metroplis section, so in the interest of the public good I'll archive it here, as in below....

Un-Well

Concerns are mounting over health effects of gas drilling.

By PETER GORMAN

Charles Morgan can’t sleep at night. The low-frequency noise from the 11 gas compressors at an Anadarko facility about a mile from his home in the little Freestone County community of Lanely gives him such bad headaches that he frequently has to take a motel room to get away from it. Sometimes he just gets into his pickup or Volkswagen and drives to a country lane elsewhere in the county to get free of it. On other occasions he’s found himself in the hospital emergency room.

“The noise has ruptured one of my eardrums,” said the 65-year-old former Air Force major, who recently retired from his engineer’s job with the Texas prison system. “The pain in my head gets so bad I think I’ll die. My legs start jumping. My blood pressure goes sky high.”

What Morgan suffers from is vibroacoustic disease (VAD), described in Noise and Health, a respected international journal, as a “whole-body, systemic pathology,” marked by “[d]epressions, increased irritability and aggressiveness, a tendency for isolation, and decreased cognitive skills,” among other symptoms.

It’s brought on by excessive exposure to low-frequency noise, the kind you hear in airplanes, near wind turbines, and from natural gas compressor stations. It’s not well known in this country, and the leading researchers on it work in Europe. But it’s real.

Jim Ashford, who lives in the upscale gated community of Riverbend Estates in East Fort Worth, suffers from it as well. “I can’t sleep. I just lie in bed awake listening to that noise,” he said. The noise comes from three Chesapeake compressors about 2,700 feet from his house. “And because I can’t sleep, I’m irritable. I just hurt in general, and I find myself getting angry and snapping over things that I shouldn’t.”

Gwen Lachelt, director of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, which works with urban and rural communities and tribal groups “to protect their homes and the environment from the devastating impacts of oil and gas development,” says noise abatement is a very important issue and is getting more important “as drilling gets closer to — and in Fort Worth’s case, comes into — urban areas.” The group has already convinced regulators in Colorado to take the noise issue seriously.

But VAD isn’t the only health problem that those in the vicinity of oil and gas operations need to watch out for. Two recent studies by the University of Colorado School of Public Health suggest that gas drilling and its accompanying activities, including compressor stations, may cause serious health problems for those nearby — that is, pretty much everyone in Fort Worth.

The researchers found that “neighborhoods, schools, and workers in close proximity to oil and gas activities may be at increased risk for cancer, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and other disorders,” due to industry pollutants. It’s critical, they said, for more study to be done on those dangers.

“There are so many areas of gas drilling that have long-term potential to affect the public health,” Lachelt said. “What chemicals are actually being used in the drilling and fraccing of wells? What emissions are coming off compressors and being released into the air? What is being evaporated from drill site pits, and how much harm will it do to people and animals in the long run? How much contaminated waste-pit water will wind up in our surface water and earth? There are just a host of issues that are not being studied and need to be studied if we’re going to get our arms around the danger these wells and everything connected with them might pose to people.”

Fears in North Texas seem to be increasing as more and more people report health problems that seem to be related to drilling — and find little in the way of regulation or real answers as to what the dangers are. At Fort Worth Weekly, the questions and worries arrive by e-mail and letter frequently. Some report noise-related health problems and worry about compressor-station emissions. Many have found their well water ruined and wonder what toxins they ingested before the levels got so high as to make the problem noticeable by sight and smell.

Renee Salzman lives in Arlington, about 700 feet from a new well at Davis and Division streets, and she’s sick. “I’ve had these severe headaches, and I’ve had to clear phlegm from my throat constantly for the last couple of weeks,” she said. “I work in a garage studio, and after a couple of hours, I’ve just got a horrible headache.” She’s convinced that her illness is connected to the well because her symptoms appeared when the drilling company “started filling up the retention pool with that toxic waste.” Her daughters, too, are suffering from headaches.

Susan De Los Santos, a member of the Fort Worth Gas Drilling Task Force, said her group “didn’t get to tackle environmental issues because we were told to wrap things up sooner than we wanted.” She’s convinced that the citizen representatives on the industry-heavy task force would support regulations requiring more recapture of emitted gases and toxins. The task force did meet with the city council to discuss environmental issues in a workshop, she said, so that the council would have some basis for addressing those issues when it comes time to redraw the city’s drilling ordinance.

Both studies by the Denver researchers relied heavily on reviews of literature — that is, gathering various pieces of research already done on health aspects of gas and oil drilling.

The first, published in August, reviewed literature on the health effects of exposure to chemicals used or produced in drilling. The list is long and frightening, with toxins ranging from arsenic and barium to radiation from radon, radium, and uranium.

Exposure to one group of the drilling-related chemicals, known as volatile organic compounds that include benzene and toluene, can put people at risk of developing leukemia, kidney and neurological diseases, as well as increasing the risk of renal and other cancers. (Toluene was one of the chemicals found in a North Texas aquifer a few months ago, downstream from a gas drilling site, water that killed and sickened livestock and made some farmland basically unusable.)

The study also looked at heavy exposure to diesel exhaust, a lung cancer hazard that can also increase risk of cardiovascular diseases, asthma, and respiratory infections. And researchers wrote that nitrogen and sulfuric oxide, the gases released from oil and gas production during flaring and from gas compressor stations, have been shown to increase the chance of deaths from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases as well as increasing the rate of premature births and low birth weights.

Other chemicals on the list: toxic metals, exposure to which can cause cancers, auto-immune diseases, and reproductive impairment; hydrogen sulfide, which can cause depression, weakness, and memory loss and can be fatal at high exposure levels; and fraccing fluid contaminants, the exact composition of which oil and gas companies refuse to reveal as proprietary information.

A follow-up paper released in September looked at the health impacts in Garfield County, Colorado, which has been heavily drilled for gas in the past several years. Medical researchers said the scant literature available, combined with preliminary studies of health status and air and water quality, indicated that Garfield County residents could be facing physical, psychological, and social problems because of the drilling.

Dr. Roxana Witter, lead writer on the studies, said in an interview that the findings are worrisome but preliminary. “My gut reaction is that I wouldn’t have my kids or mother or grandmother living near gas drilling because of the potential health risks,” she said. “The more thoughtful answer is that without data informing us what the exposures are, we cannot be specific about the hazards.”

The preliminary data from Garfield County, she said, suggests that known exposures to dangerous chemicals are a real concern. “But when someone says ‘I’m throwing up’, or ‘I’m constipated’, I want a physician to be able to answer the question of whether those things are related to gas drilling. So I want studies done. Without them there will always be doubts. We’re trying to bring science to this issue so that the agencies that are charged with protecting our health can have the data to do that.”

She urged that more studies, targeted specifically at the gas-drilling industry, be done. “I believe it’s vital that someone begins to do legitimate scientific monitoring of air, water, noise, and light in connection with oil and gas development — drilling and production — near urban areas,” she said. “There is a potential for serious effects, but the science is not yet there to explain it.”

Lachelt would also like to see more studies done but thinks the gas companies could do a lot even now to mitigate human and environmental contact with toxins if they chose to. “We want the companies to publicly disclose the chemicals they’re using in drilling and fraccing. And we want them to use technology to capture the emissions that come off compressors and wells during flaring,” she said. “British Petroleum has been working with green completion technologies” — systems to recapture gases that otherwise escape into the atmosphere — “on 40 percent of their new wells, and they’ve found they can break even on the deal financially by selling what they capture and then also eliminate an enormous amount of methane from being freed into the air.”

A technology called the closed-loop system can also eliminate most of the wastewater pits — where toxic water sits and evaporates into the air until it’s hauled away to injection wells — by recycling the chemical-infused water in a given well.

“At a bare minimum,” said Lachelt, “wastewater pits need to be lined, fluids have to be removed quickly, there shouldn’t be any onsite burial of pit waste, and closed-loop drilling should be standard operating technology. And we immediately need to insist that only nontoxic substances be used in drilling and fracturing a well.”

The real fear, she said, is that “the accumulation of toxins in the air and water might do major health damage as time goes by. Are we going to see more people getting cancers? The only way we’ll know is by having ongoing monitoring and health studies to see what’s really going into the air, onto the ground, and into our water systems.”

In the meantime, Jim Ashford and Charles Morgan don’t see an end to their sleepless nights.

Lisa Sumi, a noise specialist with the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, said that while the gas companies might claim that complaints like those from Morgan and Ashford are not connected to the compressors near their homes, in Colorado OGAP convinced the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission — equivalent to the Texas Railroad Commission — to recognize low-frequency noise as a very real issue.

“Now when someone complains, the owners of the compressor units have to take readings, and if there is low-frequency noise being emitted, they have to eliminate it. Period,” she said. “And it’s as simple as putting up a building around the compressor to contain the sound. It costs a little for the gas companies but makes them much better neighbors.”

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...

Barnett Shale Ruining Lives in Texas

Way back in 1971, when there was still a Soviet Union, in the Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan, the Soviets were drilling for natural gas when the drilling zone collapsed and natural gas started to spew forth. Not wanting those vapors in the air, the Soviets set it on fire. It has been burning ever since, like a window into a mythical hell. I don't know why a way has not been found to harness this wasted energy.

Meanwhile, here in Texas, holes continue to be punched through the earth to reach Barnett Shale so that some water process, called fracturing, can release the natural gas.

This pleases many here in Texas. And greatly upsets others. Mostly those who have had their lives made miserable by having drillers suddenly show up on their property.

Last week Fort Worth Weekly had a sad story about a couple in the Fort Worth suburb of Azle who'd moved here from California to their dream ranch in a formerly bucolic setting. The distance from a residence rules that exist in Fort Worth don't exist in Azle. So, Devon Energy put up a drilling site 213 feet from Mike and Annette Daniel's house.

The drillers cut down a line of trees that gave the Daniel's privacy in their backyard and pool. And then the noise and light show began. And the dust. I've been through this myself. From over a 1000 foot distance. After a few months the worst was over.

You can read the entire story, "Paradise Lost" in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's nemesis known as FW Weekly.

Go to my Texas website for more about the Barnett Shale or what I call Fort Worth Flatulence.

And below you can watch a video of the ongoing glimpse into Hell in Turkmenistan.