The FW Weekly has done an outstanding job reporting on The Big Takeover of Fort Worth by the gas industry.As usual, we have to ask WHO is listening???
Some highlights below, the entire article at the Weekly here. Don't miss it or the pictures!!
14 new wells are planned for a Fort Worth park within 600 feet of a proposed elementary school and community center. Oh, and a gas industry lobbying group has been given the right to put a class in a Fort Worth public high school, with full control of the curriculum.
But during the hashing-out of the most recent Fort Worth gas-drilling ordinance, Mayor Mike Moncrief took environmental issues out of the hands of the task force designing the ordinance. City staff later left the green completion of wells, with vapor recovery systems and closed sludge pits full of toxic waste, up to the discretion of the gas companies, rather than requiring any such measures in the ordinance.
Chesapeake has another public relations disaster about to happen. Its Murkat site drilling plan calls for up to 14 wells to be drilled directly adjacent to neighboring Rosemont Park on the Fort's South Side. "And that plan now collides with a Fort Worth school district plan to build a combination elementary school/community center right across the street," said Gary Hogan, a member of both of the city's drilling ordinance task forces.
"When you look at the whole picture," Young continued, "it's as if the gas industry got together to say, 'We're going to own this city.' And to some extent, they do. They've taken over city hall, no question about that. And they've taken over the parks department, which has given them every waiver and variance they've asked for. They've gotten into the libraries, and now the industry is running its own program with its own curriculum in one of our public schools.
Our hats off to the Weekly!
Those of you reading outside of Texas, PLEASE SEND HELP!!
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