Arlington divided:
On one side are families who want to be safe, retain their property values and live in a community not an industrial zone. Fathers are in tears.
On the other side are individuals who only want money. (This group does not live near the drill site.)
This is tragic. This is ugly. And if the site is approved, they will all be contacting me.
What do you have to say for yourself and your company, Blake Jackson? don’t care.
The CHK paid liar is talking now and he is a little hot under the collar. He is dragging out that tired line about energy independence? Really?
Shippin’ Shale: Energy Independence Means Exporting It So We Can Import It. Got That?
Lots of public pressure so the council denied the first drill site which is a first.
So that’s one down now there is another one to go and the Mt. Olive Baptist Church is speaking for approval of the well because they want the money. UNBELIEVABLE. UPDATE: I have blogged about the Barnett Shale Money Changers before and about God and Gas Drilling.
When the room is almost empty and hardly anyone is watching, the council votes to approve more wells where the poor folks live.
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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I really liked the science teacher who said all drilling should just STOP and they should form that Gas Drilling Task Force. He made perfect sense. It was sad to be reminded how that kind of rational thinking always falls on the deaf ears of this City Council. Gasland is alive and well. Especially if you live in a less “pretty” neighborhood. Sleep well, Chesapeake. It was a close call, but Arlington is still your girl.
But the council would appoint the task force members so you would end up with Ed Ireland like they did in Denton. Huge mess!
TO The CHK paid liar:
Tell me again WHY must we polute our air, water and land for GAS if the nation is on pace this year to ship more gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel than any other single export, according to U.S. Census data going back to 1990. It will also be the first year in more than 60 that America has been a net exporter of these fuels. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/story/2011-12-31/united-states-export/52298812/1
Why is an industry representative on any task force? That’s terrible. That doesn’t make any sense. These City Councils have it made because so few pay attention to what’s going on week in and week out.
It’s OUR job to make sure our Government Officials do know we ARE paying attention.
I was asleep, once too, thinking naively that government cared, the industry only had our best interest in mind.
More people are waking up, more people are getting involved, and for everyone involved in making a difference,
THANK YOU!!
If the Truman/Cowboy Stadium site would have been heard first, I wonder if things would have gone differently? I called the council cowards for approving the site once the chambers was cleared of our new found fractivists who cared not to stay for the next hearing of the well near the Entertainment District in my Old Town Neighborhood. I give many thanks to the “real” people that protested against fracking outside the chambers earlier that stayed for the other drilling case. I jumped Councilwoman Capehart’s case for her comments on Rushcreek how “folks came together, networked, learned about the process and took a stand” because my neighborhood didn’t get that benefit. My neighborhood doesn’t even speak English. They did not have a network to inform them of what was even happening. I did not even get an invitation to my own Chesapeake neighborhood meeting, and I bet no one else did either. I told them the nearby low income housing and mobile home resident’s children were not represented and the winds will blow their way with the pollution. These low income children are on CHIPS insurance, and when they get sick, their medical bills would be a drain on society. I reminded council that this too was a “challenging dense area” as was admitted by the Chesapeake representative earlier when talking about the Rush Creek site. I told them these aren’t our grandpa’s traditional vertical wells which used only 2,000 psi, were not water and chemically intensive, and did not use detonation guns to fracture unconventional shale at 8-10,000 psi in the air shed of urban, highly populated areas. I said that our grandpa’s wells did not need to truck off huge amounts of toxic water to be injected into the earth to cause earthquakes, and that is is not a question of “if”, but “when” the toxic mud farming happening in Venus TX will eventually find its way into our drinking water supplies. I ended by loudly vocalizing that the only way to save this town was to plug every well and stop them (Chesapeake) from ever coming back in when the price of naural gas goes up! FYI First Methodist indirectly showed support by their inaction to show up in opposition as requested. Mount Olive Baptist Church had two speakers that prostituted themselves before God. Another pastor from a church in the area made a biblical comment to the effect of “money will take care of everything” which left those who study the bible wondering why he failed to give the book number and verse….
It was an interesting dynamic to say the least. On one side were affluent, informed residents who united together as a group which was highly effective. Unfortunately, many Rush Creek folks seemed interested exclusively in their own neighborhood and their property values. I doubt many of them care about the big picture as long as they are not drilling in their backyards. If they were, they would have stayed for the second hearing. On the other side of the spectrum were impoverished church leaders representing the community who threw their congregation to the dogs due to their lack of knowledge about the whole process.
Well said.
Watching it on the TV was interesting! You can’t experience everything that was going on, of course. Clearly, it was sad to see the room empty out prior to the other well site coming up for discussion in its own Public Hearing.
This other one will affect the Arlington community adversely as well, but because it got the “blessings” of one of the African-American churches that happens to be leased to Chesapeake…the Council just said, “Yes.”
All that discussion and information for several hours didn’t mean a thing. They could have at least postponed it by letting it die without a motion – out of consideration for what had just happened. Our North Texas City Councils are not “Big Picture” people. Not sure how to describe them.
It was shocking to see that 2nd vote after such an intense evening. Arlington is definitely a city divided.
It was even better in person. It was the first time that I had attended a council meeting and arrived a half hour early to find the parking lot completely full. When I approached City Hall I was estatic to see protesters with masks over their faces and holding various anti-fracking signs. It made me want to jump for joy. In fact, I did! Right there. I wanted to hug these people.
Your first time to attend a Council Meeting?
Oops. Thanks, Mary, for pointing out that badly composed sentence. What I intended to say was that I had never witnessed such a packed house with standing room only.
That is really unfortunate that the residents didn’t unite. In Southlake, it wasn’t that residents didn’t care about each other, they were just blissfully unaware what was going on. Once residents from each of the prospective drill sites joined forces, we became a much more effective voice. Shame on Arlington City Council.
Sounds like drill anywhere else but not in my backyard mintality.
http://www.arlingtonvoice.com/content/did-arlington-just-get-occupied
check out the occupiers at that meeting!!!
Our efforts to stop CPK from drilling at Rush Creek wasn’t based on social status or home value. Most of the homes closest to the location are probably in the mid to high $100K’s whose owners have lived there several decades. They deserved just as much of a right to fight to have CPK denied a permit as the folks in Oak Lake had of fighting to get it permitted. CPK originally agreed o drill on an already identified site in DWG. DWG denied their permit in Aug 09 for procedural reasons. Earlier DWG had also denied XTO a permit for much the same reason. The difference is that XTO fixed their problems, got the permit and are drilling there. CPK opted to abandon that effort at an already zoned site because they had purchased Paloma’s rights to Rush Creek and thought our community would roll over for them. They were wrong, and we beat them twice to keep them out.
Kim, I apologize for not sticking around for the second hearing. I was ignorant to have thought the momentum would carry over.