The West Australian 7 November 2014
Denton, Texas, has an estimated population of 123,000 people and is within the Barnett Shale, one of the larger gas fields in America.
It reportedly has 272 active fracking wells, with 212 additional wells within it’s extraterritorial jurisdiction.
Denton gas industry infrastucture
On 4 November 2014 over 58% of its eligible residents voted to ban any further fracking within city limits. The people had finally had enough.
The evacuation of houses and diversion of flights at the city airport near a well blowout in April 2013 was probably the one straw too many for some of theses voters:
Air quality samples were gathered when the incident was nearly over. Fort Worth-based Cudd Well Control, which EagleRidge first contacted at 5:30 a.m., had arrived at 11 a.m. and capped the well at 3:39 p.m., according to state documents.
One 30-minute air quality sample was collected downwind at 3:21 p.m. and another 30-minute sample was collected upwind at 4:11 p.m., according to state records.
The downwind sample detected 46 of the 84 hazardous air pollutants tested for, including benzene and ethylene dibromide, or EDB. Upwind, the sample detected 27 of 84 chemicals. Neither benzene nor EDB was detected upwind, state records showed.
Within 12 hours of the vote results being announced the gas industry and its political supporters mounted a legal challenge to this ban and went to the 53rd District Court of Travis County seeking a permanent injunction.
The application for this injunction has an unusual twist - referring to the gas leases on public land as “the school kids' minerals”.
Presumably the school kids actually living in Denton are supposed to tolerate, for the common good, the level of air pollution which may be experienced within the environs of these gas wells.
*Photographs found at Google Images
*Photographs found at Google Images
4 comments:
And yet here in NSW our chief scientist Professor Mary O'Kane has just handed down a report into the CSG industry after an 18-month investigation, which acknowledged CSG mining posed risks to the environment but said those risks could be "managed" by tighter regulation, closer monitoring of the industry and more training for CSG companies.
Now we seem to believe "scientists" when they preach to us about climate change, will we be believing our Chief Scientist or are her findings just another inconvenient truth?
Final Report of the Independent Review of Coal Seam Gas Activities in NSW September 2014
http://www.chiefscientist.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/56912/140930-CSG-Final-Report.pdf
Excerpt:
There are things we need to know more about
• While Australia has a long history of working in the subsurface, there is still considerable uncertainty associated with the development of any new resource province. Currently
CSG activities tend to be considered mainly at a site-specific level. A better understanding of the industry impacts at scale and over time is needed. To enable better planning decisions and better management of cumulative impacts, it will be necessary that industry collects and provides to Government significantly more data than at present
including data from a wider range of sources. With a diverse range of resources, including coal, CSG and underground water, hosted in our sedimentary basins, there is a
need to understand better how the different resources and their development regimes interact. More detailed knowledge of the structure and composition (especially regarding hydrogeology) of the sedimentary basins is needed to enhance productivity for the CSG
industry through more precise resource characterisation and better subsurface and surface environmental management.
• There is a need to understand better the nature of risk of pollution or other potential
short- or long-term environmental damage from CSG and related operations, and the capacity and cost of mitigation and/or remediation and whether there are adequate financial mechanisms in place to deal with these issues. This requires an investigation of insurance and environmental risk coverage, security deposits, and the possibility of
establishing an environmental rehabilitation fund. Doing this is essential to ensure that the costs and impacts from this industry are not a burden for the community.
• Legacy issues, including better understanding of inappropriately abandoned wells, need attention.
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Final Report :
" While Australia has a long history ....." relevant to Australia's short history of white supremacy.
Yep .... that looks better.
Perhaps the terms of reference were a bit narrow.
After all here in Queensland the well numbers in 2011 had the capability to draw enough water from the underground water table (think Great Artesian Basin) to supply a city the size of Melbourne.
And thats on 2011 well numbers.
Here's hoping .... for once .... "Anonymous" does some research.
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All quiet on the "Anonymous" front.
Perhaps the J-35 lemon that he is flying for Abbott ..... at a "debt, debt, debt" cost of $24 billion ..... can't reach lift off here.
And here I was thinking he was the Northern Rivers protector of CSG.
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