HAVING A GAS ATTACK?

Taking Bean-O or Gas-X won't help in this case. The problem is in the City Council rather than your digestive tract. Those champions of the gas industry are absolutely certain that gas drilling right here in Trinity River City is perfectly safe, environmental friendly and loved by all. How do they know that? Chesapeake, XTO, and others probably gave them a note of assurance along with their campaign contributions. A campaign contribution is better than a thousand words, as the old saying goes.

At a public meeting sponsored by the League of Neighborhoods Association, a month or so ago, two startling revelations were apparent. The first was that the mayor of Dish TX (population under 200) and a private citizen from Westworth Village did more to precipitate an environmental investigation of the effects of gas drilling on air quality than the City of Fort Worth (population over 700,000), its city council, and environmental department. The resident of Westworth Village had concerns about the effects of fumes, from equipment ancillary to drilling and producing gas, on goats. Not tin can eating goats, mind you, but goats that produce milk for cheese. High end cheese, no doubt. 

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) sent a toxicologist out to see what was up with that and apparently he found a situation of contaminated air. My best information is that goats breathe the same air as humans but as long as humans are not falling down in the streets we won't expect much out of our city council. Frankly I'm not too worried about the effects on humans. After all, we smoke, drive cars, work around heavy equipment, pass our own gas, and it doesn't seem to stunt anyone's growth, so why worry? On the other hand, if it affects goats then it might affect other small critters and even bees and other insects. That might not be too good in the long run. Of course that's pretty heavy for politicians. They don't deal in relatives they deal in certainties. Like where's that next campaign contribution coming from?

The second revelation was that the gas reserves may not be all they've been cracked up to be. That is they may be consumed much quicker than the 20-30 years that have been bandied about. That being the case, it might take more wells than previously thought to pay off the capital costs of pressure stations, pipelines, etc., and thus we may have far more wells in the Barnett Shale than we ever expected. No big deal? Well maybe. When Tarrant County is criss-crossed with pipelines and every block has a compressor station and explosians and fires become an everyday occurrence, we might wonder if it had all been worth it.

There are a few people who are concerned. They have formed the North Central Texas Communities Alliance. Since local governments are typically non-responsive until the sky is actually falling, the NCTCA is banding small towns and neighborhood groups together to bring pressure on government to be proactive in investigating the environmental and safety issues related to gas drilling. We thank the gas industry and local government for painting the busses with slogans and turning out propaganda favorable to the drilling guys, but we're just not buying it. There are too many incidents on record of death and damage to persons and property to sit idley by any longer.