SOS sent from Karnes County in the Eagle Ford Shale

This are photos of a flare from Marathon Oil Company’s East Sugarloaf facility in Karnes County taken by a resident.

East Sugarloaf started today at 2:30 with this awful pollution and I have picture documentation.  I also called TCEQ but got a recording but entered it in prior to the recording time ending.  Wind direction is SW and S straight at us and the Cerny household.  The smell is diesel and something very strong that took my breath away almost like ammonia.  It is now almost 4:30 and there is no change in the smoke nor the smell.

This is what people in the fracking sacrifice live with on a daily basis. There is no escape unless you leave home. It’s constant.

And this was sent to me on June 25th by the same person:

Last week I became very ill from something in the air.  I could not tell what smells were in it, but with my gas mask on, I could only stay out outside 10 minutes.  My skin burned, eyes burned, and the filters of the gas mask were not helping. I had to go and do a rescue inhaler.  I went back out to pick more tomatoes and the same thing happened.  Burning skin, eyes, nose and mouth and I felt as if I was out of air.  I went inside and did another rescue inhaler.  I tried one last time and stayed out for about 5 minutes and gave up as I knew that I needed my breathing machine with albuterol medication.  It takes set up time and I didn’t know if I would have enough time or not as I was having trouble breathing.

I called a phone number of an Marathon Oil Supervisor, A.J. Kurkey,  that was given to me to make a report about this.  I told him the wind direction was SouthEast and changes to SouthWest and  that I felt it was coming from East Sugarloaf. He told me that he was in San Antonio and would check into it and call me that evening or in the morning.  He didn’t return my call.

I called TCEQ to report in the morning.  George  was out and his replacement for the day was Jennifer.  I told her and about AJ Kurkey.  She she she would check into it and one of them would call me back.  He called me back at 10:30 telling me nothing was wrong at their facility and to please call back if I had any further problems.

I told this landowner to NEVER call Marathon. Their job is to get the oil and gas out of the ground the cheapest way they can and they will only pay you lip service to stall.

Here is information on who to call when things go wrong. And things always go wrong.