Texas Sharon's Bluedaze

Fracking News

How to keep kids in your neighborhood safe from gas wells.

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The Texas Railroad Commission has a new curriculum focused on keeping students safe from exploding gas wells.

What's the Risk?

A ready to use lesson plan and video on what every student should know about the potential dangers of hanging around well sites.

It's a half-hour curriculum for middle and high school kids that was created because of a tragic accident involving 4 students.

In April 2003, four students in Palestine, Texas were killed when they inadvertently set off a massive explosion of several oil storage tanks. While appearing safe, the oil stored in the tanks can give off flammable fumes. According to investigators, these fumes were ignited by a cigarette lighter.

Wouldn't it be better to:

a. not place gas and oil wells near where students can loiter around them, or
b. use emission control devices to prevent the flammable fumes thereby recovering more product to sell?

The curriculum states:

Oil sites include tankers, ladders, pumping units on timers, high voltage electrical boxes, pipelines and dangerous oilfield chemicals.

Messing around well sites is a bad idea.

Oh, and also, there are all those highly flammable fumes.

This weekend, Aruba Petroleum started venting, AGAIN, at the Ruggiero's place. TCEQ testing revealed very high levels of flammable gasses. Yet, women and infants came to visit the workers at the site and stayed for most of the day in the travel trailer parked on the pad. I think we can assume they were "messing around" at the well site. Not only were the infants exposed to the drilling toxins, they were subjected to the dangers of the flammable fumes.

This industry is consistently inconsistent.

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.

Comments

  1. scubawithdogs says

    This information needs to be sent to the Denton County Independent School District. I swear someone told me there are gas wells next to soccer and football fields at many of the schools in Denton and they were right.
    The school district can't figure out why enrollment is down but given a choice who would want their child playing next to a gas well site, and a poorly regulated site at that.

  2. Anonymous says

    From 2003 to 2010, that's about 7 years for the RRC to do something! Quick action! And then on top of that the RRC seems to blame the problem on the kids, not the operator! Typlical blame-game work by that RRC!!!

  3. Anonymous says

    Someone better send this to the Lewisville ISD. They are going to need this in their curriculum!