Barnett Shale: Two good things happened today

FIRST
I just got home from UNT Speaks Out – Gas Well Drilling: What Does It Mean for North Texas? I’m thrilled! I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired this. ~Galadriel

Featured speakers where:

• Dr. David Sterling, Chair of the UNT Health Science Center School of Public Health
• Dr. Terry Clower, Director of the UNT Center for Economic Development and Research
• Dr. Robert M. Figueroa, Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, and the Director of the Environmental Justice Project.

These presentations were a great starting point for a discussion that is long overdue. I could not help augmenting the presentations with a little additional information. (Believe me my ears were bleeding with the effort to stifle myself. I’ve been doing this for 7 years now and was involved long before this. To substantiate my augmentation:

• The Oil and Gas Industry’s Exclusions and Exemptions to Major Environmental Statutes.
• Mitigate the emissions with Best Available Control Technology. Also see: Drill-Right Texas. Also see: We can minimize negative side-effects of shale drilling
• Royalties – I will need to supply this information separately.
• The Cornell Study: Assessment of the Greenhouse Gas Footprint of Natural Gas from Shale Formations Obtained by High-Volume, Slick-Water Hydraulic Fracturing – Robert W. Howarth, David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology, Cornell University (Revised January 26, 2011)
• Cars not only culprit for smog references North Texas air study by Donald Blake, a University of California professor of atmospheric chemistry.
• Barnett Shale Health Impacts – Case Studies
  

Additional information that I was dying to supply but didn’t:

• Oh please!!! The Armendariz study was peer reviewed and only industry disputes it.
• 50% of Texans get their water from groundwater. (But, it’s all one water anyway so…)
• Rural areas matter too because we grow your food and the food your food eats. Also, there are more abuses in rural areas.
• Regarding the water used for hydraulic fracturing: “Disposing used water through properly operated and maintained injection well systems, into deep rock formations, essentially removes that water from the active hydrologic cycle. Conceivably, this water could return to the active hydrologic cycle at some very distant point in the future (speaking in geologic terms, well beyond human time frames).” ~Dr. Paul Hudak, Professor and Chair, Department of Geography, UNT.
• About the TCEQ air monotors.
• About the EPA: Please consider that they are our only hope here in Texas.

The most exciting thing was all the young people there who want to get involved please contact me. There was a 13 year-old looking for a project and I am, sometimes, not good at thinking fast, but now I have a great idea so please contact me.

SECOND:
When Congress decided that some of us should be guinea pigs for this hydraulic fracturing study, it might have seemed like a good idea to some at the time. And, I do not deny that having the EPA conduct your science experiment is much better than having industry alone conduct it. Other people are not keen on being in this grand science experiment if there is a way to avoid it. I am happy to say that one community voted tonight to consider a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. Just say “Thanks, but, no thank you” to that science experiment. That, Dear Readers, is courage.

I don’t know how to label this post.