Part I. See the comments.
About Sharon Wilson
Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.
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Heres two video’s in memory of Dustin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpzt456ptDo
Here’s a video of working with flowback…his name is Justin too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP6xh8Ztlz0
We received an e-mail last week from a frustrated Arlington resident who lives in close proximity to a gas drill site. Since TCEQ hasn’t been much help, he purchased his own H2S monitor. It went off last week displaying a reading of 39 ppm. To think that these drill sites are zoned inside our residential neighborhoods is incomprehensible. Maybe it’s just a bad dream and we are all going to wake up soon. Or maybe we will all be put to sleep permanently by inhaling too much H2S.
Fish Creek Neighbor recently posted..Fish Creek Monitor Attends Screening of Gasland II
I’m eternally grateful every day I got out alive, with no sense of smell for 9 months, and a permanent chemical sensitivity to all sulfur byproducts!!
Thoughts and Prayers to the family,
and for all those who suffer health ailments to this process
Good post. That H2S is plenty bad, we know it well in Booger County–lots of sour gas being treated there with lots of emission of H2S and all kinds of other crap.
Oh, and I for got to mention that there has been absolutely NO HELP from the TCEQ in Booger County.
The TCEQ doesn’t help anyone unless you badger them constantly. You have to badger them to come out, badger them to come back, badger them to test, badger them to complete the report, badger them to give you a copy of the report, badger them to get the report approved ‘by management’.
Getting the TCEQ to help in any way is really a full time job in itself.
Right on, Tim. I have renamed it the WCEQ.
WCEQ, “W” as in worthless? Tim, at the end of the day, you had to prove your effort, much like my letters i have filed away. Did your efforts have any positive effect? Did you find anyone who helped, ever? My experiences were mixed, mostly, and I do mean mostly, not worth my time. I did get the hose pulled from the condensate tank that was being drained into our water supply, win. The rotten egg smell was gone from Argyle Central by the time they finally got out there to investigate. I only called once, since I don’t live right there, and was driving by. It did make me sick though. The joke that was the Dean/Neece well that was never fracked that I, yes, little ole me, had to prove to the Texas RRC who owned the damn site, and I have the letters that went back and forth to prove it, because the operators kept lying denying it was theirs. the damn Texas RRC didn’t even know whose well it was! So my question is, was your work worthwhile? Or were you, just pissing in the wind? I never could point a finger at any one person since I was surrounded by a multitude of operators, who all lost their asses, by the way. Most of the wells are now plugged, the real estate is ruined. Take heed folks, this is what happens, they come in, make promises, divide your community, suck up all your water, ruin your land, and haul ass, leaving you behind to pick up the pieces. A few people probably made a little money, but I guarantee you, there probably was no government agency eagerly waiting to help you test your air or water. Take a look around. What’s on TV? Natural gas commercials and commercials for cancer hospitals. Hello, anyone out there? So, make up your own acronym for TCEQ, EPA, Texas RRC, or any of those jerks who threw us to the wolves and did their half-ass cancer study for Flower Mound with data that didn’t include the then current moms and kids. Now, I need to rest, I’m tired. My heart isn’t the same anymore, and I don’t have a gall bladder or an appendix, they melted or had holes in them or something like that.
The TCEQ does help. A little. They do have a few very caring folks, the so called boots on the ground, but one of three things happen to them: They get promoted, and then they become part of the political machinery (translation: no more help) they become disillusioned by the reality of their experience, knowing first hand what people are going through and the tired of ‘Management’ doing nothing, or they just go through the motions of filing reports, taking the occasional air sample, etc.
The amount of work that the caller has to do to get anything done is ridiculous. That 12 hour window for response time? Yeah, you have to be available during that entire period of time. I recall one time when I called late at night for one of those ‘stuck valve’ releases that was just spewing gas into the air, and the TCEQ supposedly came out, and couldn’t find it. I didn’t stay up all night and turned my phone off. Had a message the next morning asking me to call them back, and did. They came back out, and had to literally take them to the site, which was still spewing at least 7 hours later. The head shaker was they drove past it at least 3 times, and you could HEAR it from my house-a mile away.
So what did the TCEQ do? They called the operator, who promptly showed up, and turned it off. THEN the TCEQ decided to conduct an air sample. No findings, no violation.
The caller has to be available at least for 12 hours. Then spend another hour or more with whomever shows up explaining it. It needs to be documented, so you also have to take pictures or video, fill out an odor (again) Two weeks later, you get a report in the mail. Then you have to file a PIR to get the full report, plus any other documentation, such as FLIR video, etc. Then wait another week or two to get that. Then, if you’re lucky, about a month later, you get the final report of what action the TCEQ is taking or going to take. 99% of the time, it’s No Violations Found. The other 1% of the time, it’s “Waiting on management approval” and that could be a year or more.
Then, just to add insult to injury, there is no documented procedure of the operator ‘reporting’ the incident to the totally useless TRRC. The operator is required to report the incident ‘Immediately’, but an undocumented, unknown, alleged phone call will suffice as the operator ‘reporting immediately’. There is NO communication between the TCEQ and TRRC, and no one willing to investigate the huge gap in time between the first call and when the operator reports it, even when you can show video that truck drivers came and went and apparently didn’t notice anything.
Christine often said we were the unpaid monitors of the gas wells in the area. Sure as shit no one else was monitoring them.
There may exist some value to the TCEQ, but the TCEQ could help far more people by taking the millions in funding they get and tossing fistfuls of cash out the truck window as they drive around not finding anything.
Right on Tim–it’s the WCEQ!