Bob and Lisa were told by their doctor to move out of their home withing 48 hours because it was too dangerous for them to stay after they were diagnosed with drilling chemicals in their blood and organs.
Flight for survival (online HERE)
Toxic emissions force family to leave home
By Brandon Evans
Lisa was treated by eight different doctors over the course of a year. A source of the sickness was never determined. In June 2009, after exhausting everything he knew medically, her internal specialist suggested that something in the environment might be causing her various ailments.
In early fall 2009, she visited an environmental doctor who confirmed the presence of neurotoxins in her blood that matched chemicals used in natural gas production.
For a list of the chemicals found in Lisa’s blood and in her lungs, see my previous blog post:
Lisa is the first person I know of who has a chemical used in hydraulic fracturing in her organs.
I have the results of Lisa’s medical testing and the results of TCEQ’s air quality tests and they chemicals detected in the air by TCEQ are the same chemicals in Lisa’s blood and organs.
If you live in the Barnett Shale, it’s critical to your health and safety that you get to know your neighbors. Lisa and Bob knew their neighbors Tim and Christine Ruggiero but they weren’t close until one day when Lisa saw Christine’s timeline of releases and spills at the Aruba Petroleum gas wells on their property. Lisa’s medical records match Christine’s timeline exactly.
The Messenger article required a subscription to read the entire thing. Be sure to bring tissues because you’ll need them.
to be continued…
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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Bon and Lisa have a beauttiful home- a home with lots of stone that Bob designed and built. Bob intentionally placed this home down in the shallows of his ranch, where it sure is cool in the summer and protected in the winter. Unfortunately, Aruba's fugitive and intentional emissions and venting not only go with the prevailing wind, but to the lowest ground- right where their home sits. Now comes the long battle of proving those chemicals came from one or both of the two drilling sites near their home. Aruba accepts reponsibility for nothing and denies everything, and is happy to spend thousands of dollars on PR firms like and attorneys. For some company that has done nothing wrong, they sure are spending a lot of money warding off questions. That's okay, their day is coming. There's a price to pay for incompetence and greed.
Watch Tim's statement to the EPA:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/37937062/Wise-County-Messenger
""if there is an eminent, substantial endangerment to the public." – the MD said "Get out in 48 hours", what does TCEQ need? Let me guess, next we will read from Ed on the Barnett Shale "Education" Council that all doctors are environmental "wackos"?
So the ball is in the court of TCEQ to put it to the Attorney General! Do we park ourselves in his office or what?
This family has shown tremendous courage and resilience by telling their story and living through what they have. I believe that they will ultimately triumph over this, be well, and return home. Sometimes it might appear that things are “happening to us” when in fact, we may have been hand selected for something bigger than ourselves. This family has the heart of a lion.
It is infuriating, but not surprising, that Jim Lovett (Aruba Petroleum’s CFO) only response to the Wise County Messenger was to refer the WCM to their Public Relations Firm, SunWest. When an Alvord resident reported water contamination to Aruba Petroleum, that’s what Aruba Petroleum CEO Larry Poston did as well. Deflect, Deny, and Lie if necessary.
They can afford attorneys (one happens to be a former TCEQ member of the General Counsel) and PR Firms, but they cannot afford to protect the environment where our children live. They can afford to place drilling operations 300 feet from our children’s rooms, but not vapor recovery systems of filters to curb their massive emissions.
I guess one of their spouses needs to have toxins found in her blood or one of their children needs to be diagnosed with asthma. After all, it’s all about them.
They’re creating jobs and we should be grateful. The most frequently used line from the local employees is “We’re just trying to feed our families” Well, so are we. And we also have an expectation that feeding your family doesn’t require toxins in the blood of our family or asthma in our children.
Aruba Petroleum’s Plano Office has the attitude: “We’re Aruba Petroleum and WE DON’T HAVE TO.” We have the Texas Railroad Commission behind us and there is NOTHING you can do about it.
The local employees need to recognize this for what it is. Open your heart WIDER and SEE. We are not against you. We are doing everything we can to protect our families. Just like you would.
There is a serial polluter among us. Aruba Petroleum may have a satellite office in Decatur, but the big boys don’t live here. They live far away from this mess. Their attorneys and PR firm don’t live here either. I guess they figured it out before we did.
One day I hope that we begin to truly look out for our neighbor and know who are neighbor’s are instead of defending an industry overall because they have a satellite office in Decatur and “support” our local economy.
I often wonder, because it is a private company, what Aruba Petroleum’s investors think of all of this. I think most of them are overseas, at least that’s what an internet search revealed regarding who Aruba Petroleum markets to.
Maybe they just don’t care either. It’s not their home soil or their family.
Aruba's PR firm has been on my blog all day checking for comments, clicking here, clicking there.
Ha! They are a big failure as a PR firm.
Still crying. Lisa, Bob, Emma, tons of love and prayers your way. You have so many people who care, you are not alone.
Aruba – F_ _ _ You!
Methinks it's time for a field trip to Plano.
class action suit.
There is a 2 year old neighbor who is having seizures. The doctors don't know why.
Anon 7:53, how many buses do you think we will need?
Aruba Petroleum, Inc
555 Republic Drive, Suite 555
Plano, TX 75074
972-312-9366
972-312-1474
James L Poston CEO
jlp@arubapetroleum.com
One more,
Aruba Petroleum Inc
15076 Fm 455, Decatur, TX 76234-7449 (940) 466-9438 ()
arubapetroleum.com
Category: Oil Refineries
I want to thank all of your for your support and thoughtfulness. We are hanging in there! Sharon, thank you for all your doing to help the environment and us people.
Lisa Parr
"555 Republic Drive, Suite 555" — I'm surprised the number is not 214-555-5555– is that even a real address. If I pay for the buses Greenfrog, will you promise to fill them with people?
SunWest is a joke of a PR firm. They don't even have the courage to deny these FACTS. Has anyone ever heard from them? No, you haven't. Just like their high priced attorneys, they sit in the shadows and charge by the hour, probably, but doing nothing. Aruba Petroleum is a serial offender, and now that TCEQ's Tony Walker has stated that the TCEQ can work with the state AG on shutting down Aruba, then I expect the TCEQ to be doing just that.
Everyone reading this blog needs to send Tony Walker, Bryan Shaw, John Sadlier and Mark Vickery and email DEMANDING the TCEQ take the appropriate action with the attorney general and shut down these sites- not just the the two by the Parr's, ALL of them in the Allison community. Aruba Petroleum is too stupid to drill, and too greedy to care.
The suite was a typo, it's 505. Info is as good as what is posted on the internet. Google maps satellite view show this to be an office building. Plano numbers are generally a 972 area code. I can promise to e-mail, tweet, post, and share with every person I know and ask them to do the same, send out a call to action. Below is a copy and paste from http://www.arubapetroleum.com, if you are serious and legitimate, contact TX Sharon, she can get in touch with me. Pardon my skepticism, so many PR firms, energy companies, etc like to make anonymous posts. Aruba has kindly listed their e-mail addresses on their web site just in case anyone would care to tell them what they think.
Aruba Petroleum, Inc.
555 Republic Drive
Suite 505
Plano, Texas 75074
Phone: 972.312.9366
Fax: 972.312.1474
_______________
James L. Poston, CEO
jlp@arubapetroleum.com
Linda Cavender, Vice President
ldc@arubapetroleum.com
John Goforth, VP
jag@ arubapetroleum.com
Terecia Martin, Land Development
tmartin@arubapetroleum.com
Kelly Davis, Division Order Analyst
kdavis@arubapetroleum.com
Harriet Vagher, Secretary, Field Operations
harriet@arubapetroleum.com
Ole Sandal, Geophysicist
ojs@oxoil.no
Kelly Weitzel, Receptionist
kweitzel@arubapetroleum.com
Jim Lovett, CFO
jlovett@arubapetroleum.com
Michael McAlister, VP Land Development
dmm@arubapetroleum.com
Tammy Cangelose, Controller
tcangelose@arubapetroleum.com
Kathy Driskell, Senior Geologist
kkd@arubapetroleum.com
Cheryl Pickens, Asst. Accounting Manager
cpickens@arubapetroleum.com
Brian Burnham, Software Mapping
bburham@arubapetroleum.com
Suzanne Baker, State & Federal Regulatory Filings
suzanne@arubapetroleum.com
Susan Caton, Receptionist
slc@arubapetroleum.com
Oh come on! Do you realize who our Attorney General is? Give me a break!
Greg Abbott sides with corporate interest every time against ordinary Texans just like Rick Perry. Just ask David Hudson in Panola about Greg Abbott. Or, check out all the work I did on him the last time he was up for election. IMO, Greg Abbott is WORSE than Rick Perry!
That's all we have in Texas–Serial Corporate Enablers! If you want a different outcome, you're going to have to find a way to get Texans to vote smarter. Good luck with that.
Abbott was jogging through a wealthy Houston neighborhood when a tree fell on him paralyzing him from the waist down. He sued and was awarded over $20 million. He used that money to launch his political career. The first thing he did as AG was tort reform so now YOU and I cannot sue for damages in the same manner that he did. If we get screwed, we are screwed!
Republican voters have screwed themselves and all the rest of us too. Abbott will never help you. He receives way too much fossil fuel money.
And you can expect things to only get worse, much worse! Ignorant voters seem to have forgotten WHY our economy is in this mess. They have forgotten that Bush caused the economic problems we have. When we lose Republican seats in Congress, we will be F*@%ed. Do you people ever check the votes on bills? Republican voters like all the rhetoric but they can't seem to figure out how it translates to real life.
Reading the article in the Messenger, I began to doubt the information when it implied air contamination caused the pecans to fall off the trees. In 2009, all the pecans fell off our trees and we couldn't buy any locally.
Also, the air contaimation was from the frac tank. Most frac tanks are not owned by the drilling companies. Anyone who lives in an area with gas production will question the source of who is responsible.
Air pollution follows Denton Creek as it seems to have a haze in the area from time to time. We are north of the metroplex and we are getting a lot of the air pollution from heavy traffic.
If frac tanks are leaking, regulators should stop it for the protection of all the public. Shutting down all gas development and the use of fracturing is not the answer, but disaster for our local economy and national security.
Your comment is so ignorant I almost didn't post it and it has to be egregious for me to refuse a comment.
Dear 8:30 am post moron…….reading comprehension sucks when you are a f_ _ _ing idiot.
If it were up to me, there wouldn't be such a thing as Anonymous posts. With rare exception, they are all people with something to hide, from the Industry or just like to disagree for sake of disagreeing. I'm not really seeing any civil discourse, all I see are people who disgaree with everything counter to their mailbox money, and a few so-called 'retired realtors' who no longer have any skin in the game, but yet feel the need to speak out of turn, speak to things they do not know, and act as if the devaluation of our properties is our fault and we should just live with it.
Again, with rare exception, I think most Anonymous posts are coming from the cowardly crew. If you can't put your name on it, then maybe you should just move along to Ed Ireland's site.
TXSharon, I'd just like to say that Tim is wrong. Maybe you have had a lot of industry-supporting anonymous posts here, but many people like myself also want to be able to post anonymously because we agree with you but aren't willing to endanger our own safety or livelihoods and end up on watchlists. The availability of anonymity is the key aspect of the Internet that has allowed so many people to feel safe expressing controversial opinions hated by rich/powerful people without having to put their entire life into it (you who do put your entire life into it, or take risks that could force you to do so, are noble and important, but you are a minority within any cause). That Internet anonymity can also be used by the opposing forces siding with the status quo is a small price to pay, in my opinion.
Dear Another:
I understand completely and fully support anonymous posts. When I first started doing this, I was completely anonymous. I am a single mother who lives in the middle of nowhere with my not-so-young-anymore son. I have received death threats and threats of physical harm to me and "my lovelies".
It was a so-called "friend" who exposed my identity publicly and started a blog dedicated solely to me. She was more dangerous to me than the industry ever has been.
I am not afraid anymore.
"You think you can intimidate me? Screw you. Choose your Weapon." Eliot Spitzer.
I'm pissed off and it's industry who should be afraid of me!
Everyone is different and has different situations. I'm all about diversity! So, keep commenting. You are welcome here.
Another Anonymous: I think you;re missing my point. If you have an opinion on the subject at hand, but are for some reason afraid of these gasholes, then use a different name. I'm having a hard time keeping up with all the 'anonymous' people who have lots to say, but very little in the way of facts to back them up. It gets to the point where it's devolved into nothing more than personal attacks (which is what bullies do when they quickly run of out facts…or they simply slink off, whining about how they're just trying to put food their family's table)
Notice the rants by the so-called anonymous 'Realtors' on this blog. They were all confronted with the facts, and they all slinked off to pout. What I don't understand is, if they are all retired, and no longer have any skin in the game, and genuinely believe their view point is correct and we were wrong, why are they so afraid to use their name? Some of them said they were going to formally file a comlplaint. You can't sign it 'anonymous'. People like me will file a PIR and get the information for my own 'watch list'.
Anonymous is synonymous with follower, Non-anonymous is synonymous with Leader. Some walk a tight-rope between the two, doing some things in the open and others covertly. Every anonymous rant for destroying our communities is another victory for this blog, I say, keep 'em comin'. People who put themselves in the line of fire for others, never tire, that's why they always win, in the long run.