The Beach Street Gateway Park Trinity River Water Stealing Is Now On Steroids

A week or two ago I mentioned seeing a backhoe working in an area that had previously held a diesel pump sucking water from the Trinity River and making a big, rutted, muddy mess in the process.

When I saw the backhoe I thought maybe it was fixing the mess. As I so often am, a couple days later, upon closer inspection, showed me I was wrong. Instead more damage was done, in what looked to me to be preparation for a bigger water thieving operation.

And today I found out that, on that, I was right. A much bigger water thieving operation is being installed.

This time, with at least 3 large pumps and a lot of very thick metal pipe to move a lot of Trinity River water. That is a lot of pipeline leading down to the river's edge.

This was quite an operation, with trucks carrying pipeline lined up, waiting for their turn to rut up the Trinity River levee.

Above you are looking east at one of the truck trailer loads of pipe being delivered, with the installation crew on the left. That is the foot/bike bridge that crosses from the Trinity Trails into Gateway Park in the background.

I saw no permit posted, anywhere where these vehicles were driving, where "NO VEHICLES" signs are posted. A few days ago I learned that a permit is required any time surface water is taken in Texas, with the permits issued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Above is a closer look at the, what I believe, is a criminal activity, that is a product of the racketeering that is going on in Fort Worth, with a corrupted city government permitting gas drillers to steal water from the Trinity River, due to the powers that be, in the Fort Worth City Government, being on what is commonly called "the take." With Fort Worth's Conflicts of Interest-laden, law breaking, ethically challenged, morally bankrupt Mayor Moncrief, the top crook on the take, to the tune of over $600,000 a year.

I'm trying to amp up my stridency on this issue, due to the fact that no one has corrected me if I am wrong. As in have permits been issued to take this water? If they have, how much do the permits cost? How much is being paid for the water that is being taken? How is it being regulated? If Moncrief is not violating the Conflicts of Interest laws would someone please explain to me how that can be?

Above you are looking at 3 of the diesel pumps which I believe will soon be put to work breaking the law and stealing Trinity River water, used for the purpose of further enriching Fort Worth's corrupt mayor and others on the take in Fort Worth's elaborate racketeering scheme that is raking in millions while poking thousands of holes in Texas, while making thousands of Texas citizens mad as hell and not wanting to take it anymore.

Above you are looking west at the diesel pumps and the bridge that leads to Gateway Park. The river is behind me. These pipes are a huge magnitude bigger than the first pipeline that stole water from this location. That pipeline was pretty much an oversized garden hose compared to these pipes.

Can anyone explain to me why this is being allowed? How does one make a citizen's arrest? Does anyone know if Mayor Mike Moncrief packs heat?

I thought Texans took serious, horse thieving and water stealing in these parts, where the west sort of began. It is just one more thing I've been wrong about.

A Giant New Barnett Shale Gas Drilling Rig Hovers Over Veterans Park In Arlington

I had to go to Arlington today. Since I had to be in Arlington I thought I'd take a walk in Veterans Park.

I was a little rattled before I turned right, off Arkansas Lane, on to Spanish Trail to see a lot of police cars, fire trucks, emergency vehicles and an awful lot of flashing lights on Arkansas Lane. With a Road Closed Sign.

I took a picture but it did not do justice to the scene.

So, I was a little distracted when I turned off Spanish Trail, on to the Veterans Park parking lot. So, I did not notice what I could not help but notice a few minutes later when I was startled to suddenly see a giant gas drilling operation fill up the horizon.

The drilling rig looked as if it was coming right out of the apartment complex across Spanish Trail from Veterans Park. I felt compelled to check it out.

I walked to the back of the apartment complex, taking pictures. The drilling rig was being very noisy, much noisier than my nearby one was when it was at this stage. But, I never got this close to my nearby rig.

A tall sound barrier, well, I assume it's a sound barrier, surrounds the drilling pad.

After I got as close as I could get I was pretty much 100% certain this drilling operation was not 800 feet from the apartments. It appeared closer to 100 feet than 800.

As I walked back towards the road I overheard a nice lady in a VW Bug ask a fellow apartment dweller if he was liking all the noise.

So, I butted into the conversation. The nice lady and gentleman told me their apartments faced the drilling rig. She said she was having trouble sleeping, that her building shook from the drilling, that the constant noise went on non-stop all day and night. Both were quite unhappy with their new neighbor.

The nice lady was very perplexed as to what could be done. I told her there were a lot of people fighting against the gas drillers. The gentleman had worked in the oil industry, so he knew how that business worked. The nice lady did not like it when I told her it gets worse, that next comes the fracking, with noisy trucks bringing in chemical laden water and a lot of dust.

The gentleman then mentioned the benzene. I mentioned the town of DISH. The nice lady didn't know there was an awful lot of very upset people who's lives have been made miserable by the out of control gas drilling industry.

I asked if they knew how close the drilling operation was to their apartments. The gentleman told me it was 40 yards.

That is 120 feet. Are the distance rules different in Arlington from Fort Worth?

What I truly do not get is how is any business for any reason is allowed to disturb a neighborhood's peace and quiet 24 hours a day, non-stop? If a private citizen did such a thing they'd be made to stop.

I'm really not against the drilling into the Barnett Shale. What I'm against is the way it's being done, the unregulated nature of it, the natural gas industry's disdain for the public's pollution concerns. Drilling 120 feet from where dozens of people reside is wrong in so many ways.

And like the nice lady said to me, "How can they do this without letting you know? Without public meetings? Who do we complain too?

I had no answers, because the really sad thing is, the government in Texas, at whatever level, really does not seem to look out for its citizens like it should. It should be a scandal. But it's not. Why? I don't know. It perplexes me.

And I have no idea which of the gas drilling culprits is committing the Veterans Park Dirty Deed. The name is usually prominently featured on the rig. But this rig was Anonymous.

The Blitzkrieg The Barnett Shale Gas Drillers Have Unleashed In Texas & The Coming D-Day

If my memory is serving me correctly, this afternoon, a time or two I have referred to the Fort Worth Police as the Fort Worth Gestapo, due to their, at times, heavy handed Storm Trooper like behavior.

A brutal bar raid here, a brutal tasering there, with little consequence for the bad behaviors.

Well, I got an email from Don Young, today, he being Fort Worth's Top Watch Dog as determined by those who determine who Fort Worth's Top Watch Dog is.

In the email DY makes an interesting analogy between North Texas in 2009 and Denmark and much of the rest of Europe in 1941.

I'll copy DY's email in its entirety below....

I saw a great movie yesterday called, Flame and Citron, a true story about a pair of heroic resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Denmark. It's WW2 and the Danish people have a mixture of fear and anger at the way the Nazi's have taken over their Motherland. The tag-line of the film is:

"Do you remember when they came?"

If my overburdened email INBOX is any indication, there are lots of people around the USA who are asking similar questions nearly 70 years after the Nazi's plundered Europe. Not to tarnish the meaning or memory of WW2, but the parallels to then and now - to Nazi's and gas drillers, are chilling.

Nearly every day I get a new message from a homeowner, a rancher, a mother with children or a distraught father asking what can be done. What can be done to stop gas drillers from poisoning their air and water? What can be done to stop the degradation of their property and the ruination of their investments? What can be done to stop the poisoning of their animals and wildlife?

As you might expect, the answers are complex and not easily resolved. The enemy is entrenched and seems unstoppable. Just like in WW2, gas drilling companies are aggressive, arrogant, in control of elected officials and the courts. They laugh at our laws and manufacture their own version of truth, as needed. But this is 2009 not 1941.

There are signs of growing resistance to the blitzkrieg that gas drillers have unleashed. Activists are being created every time a driller bulldozes a fence, dumps poison near our drinking water, sets up a pad-site next to a school or releases a cloud of toxic gas in the name of profit.

For some of us, patriotism is gaining new meaning. But this is NOT about radical political ideology. This is about fundamental rights to clean air and water. The stakes are getting higher every day. What is your tipping point?

"A patriot must always be ready to defend her city against her government."

-Edward Abbey

DY

North Texas Shaken By Another Earthquake

The earth moved unexpectedly, again, in formerly earthquake-free North Texas, on Friday, about a half hour before midnight.

The latest North Texas earthly rocking and rolling was epicentered in the town of Mountain Creek in Ellis County.

This was a 2.8 magnitude quake, felt as far as Fort Worth, 54 miles from the epicenter.

I was in Fort Worth at a half hour before midnight on Friday and I did not feel the earth move that night.

Cleburne is still trying to figure out why that town was hit with numerous quakes this year.

Meanwhile Barnett Shale natural gas drillers continue to poke holes in North Texas, followed by squirting a watery chemical stew into the holes which causes the fracturing of a layer of the earth above the molten lava zone.

I don't see how any reasonable person could possibly think there might be a connection between fracturing a layer of the earth's crust and the earth starting to quake a bit where previously no quaking took place. The quakes must be being caused by something else. The increase in the number of obese Texans perhaps?

My Fort Worth Eyes Are A-Stinging In Dirty Ol' Town

I had my bedroom window wide open all night. This morning my eyes were sort of stinging. When I departed here, about a half hour before noon, and saw a broad view of the sky for the first time today, I thought it was foggy.

I was wrong. It was smoggy.

The first time I remember smog stinging my eyes was during the 1970s in Los Angeles. Los Angeles has greatly improved its smog problem over the years. I did not know until 1991 that Los Angeles has a range of mountains to the west that looks sort of like the foothills to the Cascades in the Puget Sound zone. All previous times the LA foothills were shrouded in smog.

There are no mountains to shroud in smog in the D/FW Metroplex. The closest thing to a mountain is the skylines of Dallas and Fort Worth. They were hazy, really hazy today.

I got an email yesterday from the individual known locally as The Watchdog. A videographer from the Environmental Defense Fund was going to be in town. The Watchdog was asking for any suggestions of examples of Barnett Shale related problems in the Fort Worth zone. All I could think of was the gas driller water pipeline damage to the levee by Beach Street/Gateway Park and the strange Chesapeake Energy pond that holds who knows what chemical stew by the intersection of Brentwood Stair Rd. and Cooks Lane.

Had I known today was going to be producing eye-stinging smog I would have suggested filming the hazy skyline. Or what I saw when headed north to Southlake today. By I-820 and Trinity Boulevard, on the southeast side of the intersection, a gas drilling operation has been going on for some time. Today there were a lot of trucks and a lot of smoke/pollution spewing skyward. That's what you're looking at in the picture at the top.

Is this what has had my eyes burning today? I can't help but wonder.

That aforementioned Watchdog has re-christened Fort Worth from its former nicknames of Cowtown and Panther City. The Watchdog calls Fort Worth, "Dirty ol' Town." I did not see a single cow or panther today. Dirty ol' Town seems much more appropriate.

My eyes continue to sting. Maybe I should shut the window.

The Texas Blahs Caused By Twitter & Barnett Shale Gas Drilling Pollution

It is a beautiful blue sky day, 72 degrees HOT, windows open, here in the little Texas burg that calls itself Fort Worth.

I should be in a good mood, all things considered. Instead I have an overarching case of the BLAHs.

I believed this case of the BLAHs was brought on by spending too much time with Twitter the past 3 days. I have been in experimenting mode with Twitter, to see if I really could make use of it.

This morning I pretty much decided, for the most part, that Twitter is useless. Or maybe my limited comprehension abilities render it impossible for me to make use of what may actually be useful about Twitter.

One of my Tarrant County co-horts is off on a secret mission this morning. I know no details, except it is a secret mission. This is not the first secret mission she has gone on. I hope it's not some sort of eco-terrorist thing. Then again, Texas could use a little eco-terrorism. There are way too many evil-doers getting away with doing dirty deeds here.

Wyatt Earp needs to come to town and bring law and order with him.

Arresting Fort Worth's Mayor Mike Moncrief would probably be a good start. I keep thinking the feds are going to arrest the man and charge him with racketeering, or whatever the proper charge is for benefiting monetarily from decisions made due to your political position. I don't see what the difference is between accepting bribes, for favors done, and having vested interests in the Barnett Shale natural gas drilling companies, giving the mayor a motivation to agree to every fool thing the gas drillers ask for.

You want the drilling distance restriction reduced? No problem. You can drill 300 feet from someone's house. You need water? No problem. Just stick a pipeline anywhere you want. You say it'd cost too much to put vapor containment equipment on the drilling sites? No problem, we can live with a little air pollution, no matter how bad study after study indicates it is. You want to run a pipeline under Fort Worth citizen's homes and pump non-odorized gas. Not a problem. We'll help you get the job done by using eminent domain, if that helps.

Maybe I am feeling BLAH due to the air that I breathe. The windows are open. I'm about 600 feet from a Barnett Shale natural gas well. It's either Twitter or the Barnett Shale that is making me BLAH. Maybe a combo of both.

Damage Done By Mother Nature & Barnett Shale Gas Drillers In Fort Worth's Gateway Park

With the Tandy Hills still drying out from our most recent deluge my fallback Saturday hiking location, for the 3rd Saturday in a row, was Gateway Park.

I really wished the Tandy Hills had been dry today, it being Halloween, so I could have searched for the mysterious Witchey Tree and the Death Van. But, going to Gateway Park gives me a good chance to check on the current status of the Barnett Gas Driller's damage done to the Trinity River levee in the process of sucking water out of the Trinity River.

I found it ironic that today at Gateway Park, by the ball fields, I saw the sign you see here, warning violators that they are subject to penalty if they commit the crime of going on the game field to practice or play an ickup game. Whatever an ickup game is.

I suppose Fort Worth wants to protect the precious fields from potential damage caused by someone playing on them. Damage like ruts.

As I walked across the bridge that leads from Gateway Park to the Trinity Trails I could hear the roar of the diesel pump busy sucking water out of the river. It was real loud today due to there being no competing noise, like wind.

I was not too shocked to see that the damage done to the levee has gotten much worse, the ruts much bigger, the mud much more widespread.

I am fairly certain the violators have suffered no penalty.

The ruts and mud are so bad now that I don't know if I could have made it past the pump, like I did before, to check out what the pump intake, stuck into the river, looks like.

I saw another interesting thing at Gateway Park today. I've made mention, previously, of the boarded up boardwalk on the southwest side of the park. The boardwalk is an elaborate work of wood that takes you down to the Trinity River by a series of switchbacks. There are 2 of these in the park. I'd not seen the other one, to see if it is boarded up, til today.

The other boardwalk is at the southeast end of the park. The times I've seen this boardwalk it has been in worse shape than the boarded up with "closed" signs one.

So, I was not too shocked to see the southeast boardwalk closed. Except it was not closed by a "closed" sign. Mother Nature closed down the 2nd boardwalk. A tree had crashed down onto the boardwalk, effectively closing it. Just beyond the closure the Trinity River had deposited a lot of mud, which made a second barrier.

That's been my exciting Halloween in Texas, so far. A cold swim well after the sun came up. Looking for ruts and mud at Gateway park. And other stuff I'm forgetting right now.

More Of A Muddy Gas Driller's Mess At Fort Worth's Gateway Park With A Missing Kayaker

Too much rain this week made it likely the Tandy Hills are not dried out enough for my usual mud-free Saturday hiking. I decide to go see mud at another Fort Worth park, that being Gateway Park and the Trinity Trails.

I was not disappointed, mud-wise. That location I've mentioned a couple times now, due east of the Beach Street bridge across the Trinity, where a gas driller runs a pipeline across park property to a diesel pump that sucks water out of the Trinity River.

The pump was not running today. But the gas boys had been at the pump. That was obvious due to the fact that the damage done to the levee and the park grass was much worse than it was when I was at the same location on Thursday to take a picture of the Trinity roaring over the dam/bridge.

Another view of the muddy ruts left on top of the Trinity levee. On the south side of the river, immediately east of the dam/bridge, the latest bout of high, raging river water has eroded off the dirt/grass top part of the levee, exposing a large area of the huge boulders that, apparently, were used to build the giant dam-like levees. I've asked before and have not heard an answer, how is it that the gas drillers get away with this bad behavior? Are they in cahoots with the local power structure? Or something like that?

Now, this was an odd scene, the Trinity River had lowered a bit since I saw it on Thursday, but it was still roaring over the dam/bridge. Why did someone, nowhere to be seen, wheel a kayak down to where the launching dock usually floats, but is currently in malfunction mode due to the flood? Where was the kayaker? A little gust of wind could easily blow the kayak into the water and over the dam. Was the kayaker actually considering launching from this location, so close to going over the dam? I saw no vehicle up by the building that stores kayaks, where the kayakers park.

If you look on the other side of the river, in the kayak picture, you can see the eroded area I referenced above.