So Far North Texas Has No Modern Day Ghost Towns Like Centralia Pennsylvania

In North Texas we have the Barnett Shale.

In Pennsylvania they have the Marcellus Shale.

Many of the same Shale drillers who poke holes in North Texas are also doing so in Pennsylvania, like Chesapeake Energy.

Some people are of the opinion that Texas is an Environmental Wasteland, that reputation earned by things like the world's biggest experiment in urban gas drilling, that being the thousand of Barnett Shale Natural Gas Wells that have been poked in Fort Worth and Tarrant County.

While some may think Texas is a bit irresponsible, methinks Pennsylvania outdoes Texas in the Environmental Wasteland area.

Pennsylvania actually has a town named Frackville. No, it was not named to honor all the fracking taking place in the Marcellus Shale.

Frackville sprang up at the time of the start of the Civil War, 1861, and was incorporated in 1876, the year of America's 1st Centennial, well over 100 years before Aubrey McClendon's greedy beady eyes started looking for places to do damage to the planet.

A very short distance from Frackville, walking distance if your idea of walking distance is around 8 miles, is the former town of Centralia.

Centralia is a rarity in America. A modern day Ghost Town.

Centralia was doing just fine as a mining town, with, at times in its history, up to a couple thousand residents.

The Sprawling Centralia Mine Fire

And then, in 1962, a fire began. No one knows what started the fire. There are several theories. The fire continues to burn to this day, 50 years later.

The fire that turned Centralia into a Ghost Town is burning in a coal vein under that town.

People continued to live in Centralia, though the earth under them was burning.

Eventually the fire got too big and too hot, to the point that Centrailia was no longer fit for human habitation.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in 1992, began condemning Centralia property by eminent domain. Some fought having their property taken.

The most recent count has 10 or 11 people still living in Centralia.

I had not heard of this particular ecological disaster til a couple days ago.

Read the Wikipedia article about Centralia, Pennsylvania to get a much better idea than I can convey of how bad it can get if underground ignitables get inflamed.

Up Early In Texas Thinking About Marcellus Shale Gas Drillers Disposing Of Fracking Fluids In Pennsylvania Rivers

It is the early morning of the 4th day of 2011 in North Texas. It is currently 10 degrees above freezing.

It was some fluke of the ISO setting on my camera that rendered the dark pre-dawn sky an un-sky-like shade of blue.

That shade of blue is sort of the unnatural shade of blue that Chesapeake Energy Hydraulic Fracturing Water Ponds are colored.

Speaking of which, the Chesapeake pond at the northeast corner of Cooks Lane and Brentwood Stair has been drawn low of late. I thought that water was the final resting place of fracking fluid that has already done its fracking, not fracking fluid waiting to do its fracking.

As long as we are on this fracking subject, I read a disturbing article in this morning's Seattle Post-Intelligencer about disturbing fracking fluid practices of the Marcellus Shale gas drillers in Pennsylvania.

Apparently the Pennsylvania gas drillers have been disposing of their fracking fluids via the simple disposal method of dumping the liquid in Pennsylvania rivers.

I have read nary a word of this in the newspapers local to me in Texas. Do the local newspapers not want to give the local frackers any ideas?

And how do we know the local frackers are not surreptitiously disposing of their contaminated water in Texas rivers like the Trinity?

If the gas drillers are getting away with polluting Pennsylvania rivers, with those rivers in what I would think must be a more environmentally enlightened part of America than Texas, well, one can't help but wonder what those gas drillers might be getting away with in Texas, what with the Texas regulating agencies all co-opted by gas industry infiltration.

And with the state of Texas at odds with the federal agencies, like the EPA, who's job it is to see that bad stuff is not done to the air and water of America.

Is any testing done of the Trinity River to see if any nasty fracking fluids are floating towards the Gulf of Mexico? If not, why not?

It is so bizarre to me that over the past 30 years, or so, billions of federal dollars have been spent cleaning up Superfund sites. Those being dangerously polluted parts of America. And then to allow some industry to inject dangerous chemicals into underground storage, underground, where aquifers live, well, it just seems sort of obvious that at least one of those areas of injection, will become a Superfund site of the future that likely will dwarf the Superfund sites of the past.

Fracking and the gas drillers and the nasty stuff they spew into the air I breathe has been on my mind the past couple days due to myself having what seems like an allergic reaction to something. I am not an allergic type person.

But. For instance.

Last night I had a bizarre bout of sneezing, followed by watery, itchy eyes. I was unable to read. This morning all is fine. I live very close to a Chesapeake Energy Barnett Shale gas pad. As in it is less than 1000 feet distant.

Today I am going to get myself some over the counter anti-histamines. I hope drugging myself helps.