Water wagon

As usual, the FW Weekly was ahead of the game on the gas drilling killing our water supply and as usual, they tell it like it is.

Fort Worth's daily newspaper has coddled if not brazenly protected the natural gas industry ever since the explosion of the Barnett Shale almost a decade ago. Now the paper has finally grown a pair of (eye)balls and taken a hard look at how the industry is affecting the local water supply.

The story also noted that gas drillers and state regulators deny any correlation between gas wells and water pollution, despite an avalanche of circumstantial evidence. The drilling industry says chemicals used in drilling are safe but has successfully fought like hell to keep from having to reveal them. Nice.

Let's see ... seems like Fort Worth Weekly wrote about the correlation between gas drilling and groundwater problems a little earlier than that - say, more than four years ago in a story ('Til Your Wells Run Dry," June 29, 2005) that drew heat from the industry and skepticism from drilling advocates. But other newspapers, most notably the Denton Record Chronicle and Texas Observer, soon began writing similar stories about drilling's impact on water sources.

The Star-Telegram continued to ignore the obvious for years and wrote countless love notes to drillers in the form of "news" articles that read more like public relations releases. After all, city leaders such as Mayor Mike Moncrief kept saying how good the shale was for the Fort, and why would the local newspaper disagree with the mayor?

Still, welcome aboard, Star-T. Better late than never - though the thousands of people whose air and water have been poisoned by drilling activities in the intervening years might not agree.

Amen.
The citizens and real news have been reporting these issues for years.
WHO's listening?