Everybody's talkin' about

WATER.

YOU might want to listen.

The WFAA video that TXSharon posted shows some of what is coming from an injection well site to a creek in Johnson County.  It ain't pig blood, but it ain't good.  And where does this unnamed creek end up?  In Joe Pool Lake.  A source of drinking water for many Texans. 

The FW Weekly tells you about the water battle taking place all over the United States, the battle between THE PEOPLE and the industry.  What happens when it's YOUR drinking water supply?  WHO will save YOU?

And the Star-Telegram tells you the latest on the Range Resources lawsuit mentioned in the part of the Weekly article below.

Did three "news" sources in Fort Worth all report on water issues?  What is the world coming to?

"The gas companies own the Railroad Commission," Lipsky said in reference to Range and other natural gas producers.

Lipsky said of Range, "They own the system ... they know they got away with it (water well contamination) and they're laughing about it. ... God help us all."

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/01/28/3694982/judge-parker-county-not-the-place.html#storylink=cpy

_____________________________________

From FWW:
The area was quickly designated an EPA Superfund site, meaning that it has been found to be contaminated with hazardous chemicals and that the EPA will try to determine who is responsible so that they can be legally forced to clean up the mess.

The EPA’s findings, released as a draft last month, clearly lay the blame at the feet of the gas industry and in particular, Encana Corporation, the gas field owner around Pavillion.

The agency found that natural gas and dangerous chemicals were migrating through local aquifers. More importantly the EPA discovered, via its own monitoring wells, that man-made chemicals used exclusively for hydraulic fracturing are showing up in the water.

In other words, these chemicals couldn’t have come from some sort of natural source or even another man-made source, but only from gas drilling. It was the first time that a direct scientific link has been made between gas drilling and groundwater contamination.

Not surprisingly, Encana and the industry are fighting back, arguing that the EPA’s findings are flawed on several grounds. The impact on their industry — and the worldwide natural gas supply situation — could be tremendous, if the EPA’s findings are upheld.

At stake are shale plays all around the country that have not been allowed to proceed until the gas industry proves it can drill without contaminating water supplies. Not to mention the blowback in places like Texas, where landowners across the Barnett Shale and other shale areas could conceivably use the EPA’s findings as a basis for damage suits and  actions to prevent or stop drilling activities. The Natural Resources Defense Council has a list of 36 places around the country — including nine in the Barnett Shale —  where landowners believe that gas fracking has contaminated their water wells.

One of those problem areas in North Texas, involving three homeowners in Hill County, stopped being a problem after the drillers, Williams Production–Gulf Coast Co., purchased all of the affected property. A second local case, involving possible contamination by Range Resources of water wells in Parker County is an ongoing legal battle.

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WTH?

The gas drilling industry swears fracking and drilling doesn't cause earthquakes.

Seismic definition:

pertaining to, of the nature of, or caused by an earthquake or vibration of the earth, whether due to natural or artificial causes.

If the "artificial causes" such as gas drilling doesn't cause earthquakes, WHY is the city of North Richland Hills covered in seismic detecting equipment by the gas drilling industry?  

WHO's responsible if your home is damaged by it?

Ask Fort Worth.  

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What's the world coming to?

The top words of 2011:

1. Occupy – ‘Occupy’ has risen to pre-eminence through Occupy Movement, the occupation of Iraq, and the so-called ‘Occupied Territories’.
2. Deficit – Growing and possibly intractable problem for the economies of the developed world.
3. Fracking – Hydraulic fracturing is a controversial method for extracting fossil fuels from hitherto unreachable deposits.

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Abatements and Lawsuits

The latest Fort Worth company set to get an abatement just settled a lawsuit for $450,000.  How much was the abatement for again?

Read the latest in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 

A lawsuit against Fort Worth-based Frac Tech was dismissed in a Parker County district court Tuesday by the plaintiff as a result of the settlement, according to court documents.

The worker, Joyce Burton of Jackson, La., was working for L&B Transport in February 2008 when she was unloading hydrochloric acid and a hose fitting came loose, spraying the acid onto her face and body, according to a news release from her attorney.

When Burton attempted to wash away the acid using one of the two safety showers available to her at the Aledo facility, she discovered that one was not working properly and the other was locked and inaccessible, the release said.

“Ultimately she was taken to a hospital in Weatherford,” Hart said. “I think for anyone in that business, safety has to be a No. 1 priority.”

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Remember Colorado?

We were forwarded a link to an article on Oilprice.com today, U.S. Government Confirms link between Earthquakes and Hydraulic Fracturing.

Mind you, they confirmed it in the 60s...

So what happens when the government says it is and the industry says it ain't?  WHO wins?

It ain't YOU.

We'll keep the readers comment attached, it was a pretty creative way of putting it.

(Oilprice) seems like an unlikely web site to be delivering the truth – but there it is – how ironic  … it takes a “quake” to send the message to Washington – that would have been the last thing I would have guessed a few years ago.  God help us if Rick “Secede” Perry gets anywhere near the White House. He will blame “Mother Earth” for not doing its patriotic duty and having the nerve to “burp” while being “water boarded”.

 

While polluting a local community’s water supply is a local tragedy barely heard inside the Beltway, an earthquake ranging from Oklahoma to Illinois, Kansas, Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas is an issue that might yet shake voters out of their torpor, and national elections are slightly less than a year away

Don't miss the article.  What do they say about history repeating itself? 

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Is YOUR aquifer next?

Fracking chemicals found in Wyoming aquifer. 

Once you destroy an aquifer, how do you fix it?

Once you're out of water, what's next?

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WHAT did he say??

Thanks to Texas Sharon, YOU can hear for yourself.

Seems local citizens with concerns about their towns, the air their kids breathe and the water that sustains them are actually "insurgents" and to deal with them, you need to download the Army and Marine Corp psy ops info.

Don't believe it?  Listen on CNBC.
Now that it's out, they say it was just a joke. 

It might be funny, if it weren't true.

Another told attendees that his company has several former military psychological operations, or “psy ops” specialists on staff, applying their skills in Pennsylvania.

In a session entitled “Designing a Media Relations Strategy To Overcome Concerns Surrounding Hydraulic Fracturing,” Range Resources communications director Matt Pitzarella spoke about “overcoming stakeholder concerns” about the fracking process.
“This was crossing a line — they considered it was on the American people, sort of like they are going in and occupying our land — which is what they are doing,” Wilson said.

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WHO owns YOUR news?

The fracing war is being waged from Texas to New York.

Read about the fracing war the New York Times is facing. 

WHAT happened to "news"?  Oh yeah, most sold out. 

Read about it on ReaderSupportedNews.org.  Bravo, NYT.

Superb investigative journalism by the New York Times has brought the paper under attack by the natural gas industry. That campaign of intimidation and obfuscation has been orchestrated by top-shelf players like Exxon and Chesapeake, aligned with the industry's worst bottom feeders. This coalition has launched an impressive propaganda effort carried by slick PR firms, industry-funded front groups and a predictable cabal of right-wing industry toadies from cable TV and talk radio. In pitting itself against public disclosure and reasonable regulation, the natural gas industry is once again proving that it is its own worst enemy.

In an era when few papers or news outlets are still willing to take on very powerful interests, The Times has pursued very difficult questions about one of our country's richest and most aggressive industries. At a time when accessing documents through open records requests faces an obstacle course of daunting roadblocks, the series has spent nearly a year using these flawed tools to collect and publish an extraordinary trove of original documentation. Archives published by The Times include thousands of pages obtained through leaks and/or public records requests. The Times reporters provide page-by-page annotations explaining the documents so that the reader can sift through them in guided fashion.

Among the revelations uncovered by The Times' admirable reporting;

Sewage treatment plants in the Marcellus region have been accepting millions of gallons of natural gas industry wastewater that carry significant levels of radioactive elements and other pollutants that they are incapable of treating.

An EPA study published by The Times shows receiving rivers and streams into which these plants discharge are unable to consistently dilute this kind of highly toxic effluent.

Most of the state's drinking water intakes, streams and rivers have not been tested for radioactivity for years - since long before the drilling boom began.

Industry is routinely making inflated claims about how much of its wastewater it is actually recycling.

EPA, caving to industry lobbyists and high level political interference reminiscent of the Bush/Cheney era, has narrowed the scope of its national study on hydrofracking despite vocal protests from agency scientists. The EPA had, for example, planned to study in detail the effect on rivers of sending radioactive wastewater through sewage plants, but dropped these plans during the phase when White House-level review was conducted.

Similar studies in the past had been narrowed by industry pressure, leading to widespread exemptions for the oil and gas industry from environmental laws.

The Times revealed an ongoing and red-hot debate within the EPA about whether the agency should force Pennsylvania to handle its drilling waste more carefully and strengthen that state's notoriously lax regulations and anemic enforcement.

The Times investigation also explodes the industry's decade-old mantra that a "there is not a single documented case of drinking water being contaminated by fracking." The Times investigation of EPA archives exposes this claim as demonstrably false.

A second round of New York Times stories showed that within the natural gas industry and among federal energy officials, there were serious and disturbing reservations about the economic prospects of shale gas:

Government and industry officials made sure that all of their reservations were discussed privately and never revealed to the American public. Internal commentary by these officials is striking because it contrasts so sharply with the excited public rhetoric from the same agencies, lawmakers, industry officials and energy experts about shale gas.

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WHO thought that was a good idea?

WHO is the genius that thought drilling next to the Comanche Power Plant was a good idea? Read about it in the Fort Worth Weekly.

All the same players and issues.  Texas is starting to sound like a broken record.  Gas drilling, water, dams, fracing, earthquakes...the list goes on.

Too bad you can only believe half of what the Corp says...which half do you believe?

“All of our infrastructure is aging,” he said. “It’s a nationwide issue. We have concerns [about] hydrofracking. We don’t have the data on it, and that’s what we need to get. We don’t want to do anything to put an undue strain on a public infrastructure. Public safety comes first.”

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They forgot to buy the doctors

More than 250 pediatricians, family practitioners, otolaryngologists, endocrinologists, oncologists and other doctors, along with the Medical Societies of at least seven upstate counties and the regional office of the American Academy of Pediatricians, wrote to Governor Cuomo today, warning that the state has failed to analyze public health impacts of hydraulic fracturing in its rush to approve permits for drilling.

“We are greatly concerned about the omission of a critical issue related to the development of natural gas using high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking: human health impacts,” the doctors and medical authorities wrote.

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Waxahachie can't catch a break

Is Fort Worth next?

First, they have their failed boondoggle.  Recently, they had an earthquake that was felt in Fort Worth.  Now, they have a major chemical fire.  WHAT kind of chemicals? Fracing chemicals.

Read Brett Shipp's report on WFAA.com.


Up until late Tuesday, about all Scott Pendery, the owner of Magnablend Inc., was telling the public was this particular facility produced was agriculture and oil and gas products. The only specific chemicals being mentioned were mostly harmless or marginally volatile.

But when pressed, the owner began telling another story.

Most of what the plant was producing was a dangerous cocktail of chemicals blended specifically to be used in hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking") fluids.

As rivers of flammable product flushed out of the Magnablend plant on Monday, all that mattered was that the workers and firefighters escaped with their lives.

A day later, local, state and federal officials began investigating what started the fire — and what all was burning.

"And so some of those products that we make in that plant do get used in that application," the Magnablend owner conceded. "Company-wide, we're probably in the 80 percentile with the oil and gas industry, and then the balance is the agriculture industry."

Later, when we tried to ask Pendery about specific chemicals parked in the tanker cars next to his facility, he ignored our questions and got back into his car without comment.

Waxahachie Fire-Rescue Chief David Hudgins told News 8 he was not aware that 80 percent of what Magnablend produces is fracking chemicals.

EPA officials said they had no idea what Magnablend was producing at the plant.

While it's legal to blend fracking chemicals, federal law states if enough dangerous chemicals are being stored on site, then the company must file a risk management plan.

No such plan has been filed for this facility.

Local, state and federal authorities continue their investigation.

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What's wrong with Texas?

You wouldn't believe how many people google that phrase each day.

Most of us here at Lone Star are all lifelong Texans, the rest got here as quick as they could.  We love Texas  though sadly, these days, we can relate to WHY people would be asking that question.

Here's a few things just to get the ball rolling -

We have some of the worst air in the nation.  Instead of working with the EPA to correct it, some Texas politicians are fighting them claiming, "we'll lose jobs".  Uh, dead people don't need jobs. 

You want to drill next to homes, rivers, creeks, schools? No problem, make a donation to a  campaign, church, library or museum and it's yours.

We can't afford to give money to our schools.  Though we can apparently afford to give some of those air polluting friends of our politicians tax rebates.  That means WE are paying the refineries. Did we mention we can't afford to fund our schools?


We are in the top 5 in the nation for horrid traffic messes.  Mind you, we're building freeways all around, however they ain't free.  Most of those will be toll roads and we'll be paying our politicians friends in Spain to drive on them.

The Fort Worth Business Press once said, "Tarrant County may be the eminent domain capital ..." If you live here or own a business here, tread carefully as it could be taken by our politicians friends, such as the gas drillers, the Tarrant Regional Water District (or Trinity River Vision Authority) or even Jerry Jones. Don't forget TXDOT.

Our water supply is dwindling faster than you can frac a well.  Our plan?  Sue Oklahoma, again.  We've already lost several times, but you can't tell a Texan no...no matter how much it costs taxpayers.

And don't get us started on the "news" in Texas.  They've been bought and brought to you by you-know-who...

What's all this costing YOU?  More importantly, what is it going to cost YOUR kids?  Do something.  Anything.  YOUR kids will thank you.

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3,000 Dams...

"Fracking near dams could cause catastrophic event per US Army Corps Engineers".  Duh. 

Read about it on TexasSharon.com.

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Just say no

To fracking.  That's what the subject of another New York Times post is about.  This time in Andes, N.Y.

If a reporter calls something "inspiring", YOU might want to pay attention.

There might be limited short-term benefits to a few, but the boom will be followed by a bust, and when it is all over “people won’t want to live here anymore.”

There was agreement that regulation wasn’t the answer, first because no regulation could prevent the disasters that come along inevitably with a project this large, and second because the state couldn’t be counted on either to pass or enforce regulations: “I can’t trust an industry that has got itself exempted from the air and clean water act.”

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Forecast - Foggy with a chance of BS

In the Fort Worth Business Press, Alex Mills, President of a pro drilling group in Texas takes shots at New Jersey lawmakers for voting to protect their water supply from fracing.

He claims:  

How many times has there been a circumstance where groundwater has been contaminated by hydraulic fracturing? In 60 years and hundreds of thousand wells being fracked, not one case of pollution has occurred.

Back in the day, fracing was vertical, not horizontal.  And when he says not one case has occured, well, we're betting those families all over the country that can no longer use their water would have a different opinion.  Speaking of opinions, read the fine print under Mr. Mills column.  "The opinions expressed are soley of the author". 

What do they say about opinions, again??

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"Inaccurate and Misleading"

No we're not referring to our politicians or local "news". 

Seconds after the back to back real newspaper articles (New York Times) concerning natural gas drilling might just be the Ponzi scheme many have warned about for years, the drillers started their spin.  Yeah, no one saw that coming.

Gas drilling companies called the information (which came from industry insider emails) "inaccurate and misleading".  Isn't that what the Times articles said about their propaganda, just in a more professional way?

As usual, local "news" jumped on the spin wagon. 

Here's a copy of what a local concerned citizen sent to the local paper.  Since you won't see the letter in the paper, we'll share it here.  Think they'll get a response?

You might tell your friends in the business that people are wary of propaganda pieces like this one masquerading as news. If Aubrey wants to put forward something that people will not consider to be "inaccurate and misleading" hype from the business end of the industry, then they need to get their most credible geophysicist and petroleum engineer to write a piece explaining how refracking can be made to work sufficiently well to keep these wells productive for 30-50 years. Oh, and the article needs to be signed and stamped with a Professional Engineer's seal so that his career is on the line. Also please stop putting out the hype about there being no chance of raw gas invading the aquifers because the fracking is done 7000-8000 feet below the surface and an aquifer is typically only a few hundred feet deep.

That dog won't hunt any longer. Look at any flagstone patio or sidewalk. You've never seen one without cracks. That's what happens in the wellbore at the interfaces between the cement and the casing and between the cement and the rock wall. There's the conduit for transporting the raw gas up the wellbore to the aquifer.

I'd be ashamed to be writing propaganda for CHK. If you want to do that then go to work for them. Hey, they'd even pay you more than the S-T does.

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"If you don't have mineral rights...

You don't have any rights at all".   Well said from a gentleman in West Texas who is another victim of the Shale.

Check out his video, the Gardendale Accountability Project, on TXSharon.  Also, check on the connection video.  YOU can't afford to miss them.  YOU could be next.

Is it ok, until it happens to YOU?

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Crooked Creeks

WHY would a fracing truck be backed up in the woods in Fort Worth?

 Oh right, there's a creek in those woods.

WHO all is involved with "clean" "safe" drilling in Fort Worth?

Think it's not happening here?  Check out the sites in YOUR neighborhood.  Lots of them seem to be awfully close to OUR waterways.

Ask WHY? 

And WHO is watching?

WHERE do those creeks flow?

Straight into the River of Denial. Just another Cowtown Connection.

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NY vs. Texas

What's the difference in New York and Texas when it comes to fracing with the water?

New Yorkers are standing up for theirs.  Where ya at now, Tommy Lee?

Check it out on TXSharon.

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