Interesting Letters to the Editor. The natives grow restless.
Denton Record Chronicle
I found “Voicing the silence” (Page 1A, Dec. 31) very interesting, especially if you work the numbers on Texas’ oil and gas well inspectors a little.
The Texas Railroad Commission has 83 inspectors, each of whom is assigned 3,259 wells. Based on a presumed annual inspection and a 50-week work year, this means they have 250 days to inspect these wells once a year.
Dividing 250 into 3,259 comes out to 13.036 wells a day for each inspector.
Based on a presumed seven-hour workday, that would mean they have to inspect 1.86 wells an hour, and I assume there’s some distance between each well since this is big ol’ Texas, after all.
Those guys must be pretty busy — all day, every day!
With this number of inspectors for the state’s 270,526 (and counting) active wells, it’s no surprise that the General Accounting Office report cited in the article is titled: “Drinking Water: Safeguards are not preventing contamination from injected oil and gas wastes.”
Bottled water, anyone?
Scott Simpkins,
Denton
Wise County Messenger
Gas well noise is annoying
By Robert Johnson | Published Thursday, January 8, 2009
Is it just me, or are these gas well compressor engines keeping anyone else up at night? The engines run 24/7 and are so loud I can hear them inside my well-insulated house with the windows and doors closed. I can’t hear the birds anymore, and I know the wildlife is disappearing, too.I have four engines near my home that I can hear. It seems to me that we need a noise ordinance in place to protect property owners from this blatant violation of our right to “peace and quiet.” Most towns have noise ordinances that force gas operators to put these engines in sound insulated buildings or force them to use the much quieter electric engines, which are more economical and environmentally friendly. The engines they are using now spew out exhaust gasses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
There is a better way to handle this, and I think we need to get a noise ordinance in place sooner rather then later.
I’m losing my hearing and sanity.
Robert Johnson
Alvord
Bonus, FYI: Adverse Health Effects of Noise
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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The state agencies in TX that regulate the O&G industry and look after the environment are worthless. They basically do NOTHING. Why do they need more inspectors to do more of NOTHING!
Also, nobody regulates noise. This is a very important issue since the noise is very damaging to residents–especially the low frequency noise (LFN). Also near us, in and about the Savell field, the compressor stations burn the RAW, sour natural gas–that's the cheapest stuff at the site–makes a lot of bad air emissions in addition to the damaging noise. A lot needs doing.
I couldn’t agree with you more! However, I do get sick and tired of people who want things to change but continue to vote the same people into office who enable Big Oil to degrade our quality of life and put our lives at risk!
Why would ANYONE other than a large corporation vote for:
Kay Granger
Phil King
Craig Estes
and so forth…
We will never see any progress with these people in charge.
How to get them voted out of office is a challenge. Sometimes even when a vote-out change takes place, the new players are bought off by special interests. Your site is good and informative. All I know to do is keep working at the problem. Right now you are correct, worthless Tx. politicians!