That is the question. Will the Fort Worth gas drilling disposal well moratorium expire? WHY should you care? WHEN is the next meeting?
The
Fort Worth Star-Telegram actually tells you some reasons YOU should care.
Should the natural gas drillers who have blanketed the city with wells be allowed to discard their millions of gallons of wastewater by forcing it back underground through disposal wells within Fort Worth's boundaries?
Does it matter? Probably not a whole lot, really -- unless a disposal well ends up near your home.
Then you might worry about things like how near it will be, how noisy it will be, what kind of traffic impact it will have and whether it will foul the air in your neighborhood.
Even if none are near your home, you might worry about that much water going to waste when North Texas and the rest of the state are suffering from such a terrible drought.
Or maybe earthquakes worry you. Some people say there's reason to believe these deep disposal wells might be behind increased seismic activity in North Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and other states.
They've been trucking their waste, the leftovers from the 3 million to 5 million gallons of water used on each well to fracture the deep Barnett Shale rock and free up the trapped gas, to disposal wells outside the city.
There are 10 such wells in Tarrant County and 14 in surrounding counties.
But heavy trucks tear up streets and add to local air quality problems. Trucking isn't a good long-term solution.
Now Hillwood Development, the company responsible for the 17,000-acre Alliance industrial, office, retail and residential communities, wants a disposal well for Quicksilver Resources, the company that is drilling for gas on Alliance land.
Maybe the best thing would be if the drillers would recycle or reuse at least some of the water from their wells. But that water is loaded with salt and toxic chemicals. Drilling industry representatives say they've poured a lot of time and money into developing reuse and recycling technologies but with limited success. They haven't come up with one they believe is effective and cost-efficient.
