Natural Gas headed for Asia Texas Sharon hits it on the head on exporting our gas overseas increasing the demand and it’s price. Once the driller’s can afford to drill in the drier gas areas of the metroplex, expect the worst. These are just some of the incidents I’ve become aware of….

We’ve already had spills (UTA & Lake Arlington),

Power outage emission events (Fulson site 2 & Pappy Elkins site 5),

Vapor cloud (XTO Ft Worth),

Migration into older wells during fracking (Carrizo, Pantego),

Arl compressor station strong odor reports called in’s to TCEQ,

Flooded compressor during rainstorm (XTO Pappy in DWG),

Tornado offline reports at Rufe Snow emission event at NRH),

Drill site flooding with storm water run off (Barron site & a Ft Worth site and one other site),

Waste disposal lightening strike (Boyd TX recently),

DWG compressor odor events that even sickened the TCEQ investigator*,

The Yeandle site emission event due to corrosion wear/poor valve maintenance,

And fracking trucks overturning/spilling (one at University Dr in Ft Worth).

These are just the tip of the iceberg of what is yet to come at this rate of accident to “build out expected”. The industry enjoys broad exemptions from regulation from air, water, drinking water, defining air & water pollution as hazardous substances, reporting these to the toxic release inventory, and waste disposal. One would hope that a local ordinance would “catch” some of these so that at one level of government folks get protection.

Since the Railroad Commission has a 4% rate of $lapping on the wrist in violations (TCEQ 20%), something is terribly wrong and we are the sacrificial lambs.

*Yesterday I was informed that we will never know what sickened the TCEQ investigator (who is no longer working there now) at the DWG Compressor Station during an emission event last August. His hand held TVA showed 1,229 ppm! I was not shocked to learn that the suma results showed a clean bill of health-funny they don’t even screen for methane, carbon disulfide, or formaldehyde.  If you call the State Dept. of Health, they send you to the Railroad Commission, who will refer you back to TCEQ. I advised a city rep from Dalworthington Gardens to use an independent lab to test the air next time an emission event occurs there, otherwise they will not be able to report back “what” is making people sick, especially since this compressor station is across the street from…

C A M P  T H U R M A N  !

Our local water departments and TCEQ have chosen to continue to screen the same chemicals prior to drilling.  Five years ago they should have adapted their screening process to look for drilling effluents, and can be rightly accused of not looking for what they do not want to find.  But then again, the idea is to make people think they are safe.