The FW Weekly has their annual Turkey Feast out. See WHO was voted the biggest Turkey's. You won't be surprised. Same stories residents have been talking about for years...
Part of our favorite of the many The Weekly served up.
Sigh. Mayoral turkey again?
He earned it for his recent comment expressing deep concern for how the good people in the Fort might be affected by dangerous emissions pouring out of all those gas wells he's embraced. "Identifying the impacts of gas drilling on our neighborhoods and on the health and safety of our citizens remains a top priority," he intoned. The statement followed the disclosure that the state environmental agency had found elevated levels of the carcinogen benzene in the air around gas wells and compressor sites.
This is a guy whose family has made a lot of money off gas and oil wells for decades. He had to have known what was coming when the first landmen showed up bearing promises of mailbox money - knew or should have known that neighborhoods would be disrupted and streets torn apart by well-support truck traffic. He should have known that the "salt water" those trucks were supposedly carrying was in fact dangerous chemical waste. He had to have known that wells would need gathering lines and compressor stations and delivery lines and that those lines could be taken by eminent domain. He had to have known that gas would be flared off into the air we breathe and that the monthly royalty checks paid to most mineral-rights-owning residents would be in the $5 to $10 a month range. He had to have known that gas wells produce dangerous hydrocarbons, that wells and pipes explode occasionally, and that compressor stations produce a constant low-frequency hum that drives some people absolutely crazy.
But he didn't say a word about those things. And then he stacked the drilling ordinance task forces of 2006 and 2008 with industry supporters and took away the panel's power to deal with things like environmental impacts.
Now, when even the state can no longer pretend there aren't poisons aplenty in the air all over the Barnett Shale, he sends out a memo saying he's all for protecting us.
He's a turkey, but not one that I would come near me -much less let enter my body in light of the fact that he's been breathing all kinds of dangerous chemicals. You can tell the man's under the influence by his behavior, esp. acting like he was some emperor instead of the mayor of a city in the US of A. Actually, he's more like other types of birds than a turkey. So, our apologies to the turkeys for comparing him to y'all.
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