Fact Checker

Since our earlier post, Testing, we received this email that questions WHY all the facts aren't presented in the news. We've wondered the same for years now.

I wonder if these facts have escaped the Star-Telegram? Today's article, "Pressure grows for testing at gas facilities" stimulated me to come up with these facts.

1. The Regional rep for TCEQ admitted at the DISH meeting where the Wolf Eagle results were reported that TCEQ didn't test for neurotoxins like carbon disulfide because the tests were expensive. They didn't even know how to do such tests.

2. The TX RRC has only 5-6 inspectors for the entire Barnett Shale region.

3. It is not true that there are many other urban areas where horizontal gas drilling is being conducted (as Moncrief claimed).

4. The information coming from CHK about "wet" vs "dry" gas comes from the PR department and is unsupported by measurements and drilling pad infrastructure and truck traffic transporting "produced water".

5. It is not true that there hasn't been an issue with air quality that has been raised to date as Moncrief claimed.

6. The council has ignored evidence of pollution that has been presented to them on numerous occasions. ("Activists said..." implies that the author does not have first hand knowledge.)

7. The council has ignored public safety evidence as well.

8.Moncrief makes over $600,000 in income from the O&G industry each year.

9. Burdette is an O&G lawyer who behaves as if he didn't know about the issues of health and safety or what the built out urban gas field would look like and claims that mineral rights trump all other rights anyway, so God is to blame for whatever the citizens may object to.

10. Scarth, Burns, Espino, Burdette, and Jordan may have income from O&G investments they didn't own before they came on Council.

11. They certainly have had political contributions from the industry.

12. There are no technical data supporting the decision to use 600 ft as a faux drilling set-back requirement and plenty of examples of damage and fatalities at larger distances.

13. The companies drilling here have a well known history of lying about their intentions, their infrastructure needs and designs, and their pollution history.

14. Quietly CHK has purchased $257 million in real property (tax values) all over the county in every zoning category. This came to light recently in a search of the TAD database. Apparently the S-T didn't think to look or question this.

I could probably come up with more facts that seem to be unknown by the S-T or deemed uninteresting.