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Jeebus,
Long (albeit eye-opening) article detailing just how badly the rural residents of certain parts of Texas are having their lives poisoned and their lifestyles ruined by the unregulated surge in fossil-fuel extraction industries.
KARNES CITY, Texas — When Lynn Buehring leaves her doctor’s office in San Antonio she makes sure her inhaler is on the seat beside her, then steers her red GMC pickup truck southeast on U.S. 181, toward her home on the South Texas prairie.
About 40 miles down the road, between Poth and Falls City, drilling rigs, crude oil storage tanks and flares trailing black smoke appear amid the mesquite, live oak and pecan trees. Depending on the speed and direction of the wind, a yellow-brown haze might stretch across the horizon, filling the car with pungent odors. Sometimes Buehring’s eyes burn, her chest tightens and pain stabs at her temples. On those days, she touches her inhaler for reassurance.
In another five miles Buehring, 58, passes into Karnes County, where she was born and once figured on living out her retirement, surrounded by a calm broken only by an occasional thunderstorm.
Today, however, the ranch-style house she shares with her 66-year-old husband, Shelby, is at the epicenter of one of the nation’s biggest and least-publicized oil and gas booms. With more than 50 wells drilled within 2.5 miles of their home, the days when the Buehrings could sit on the deck that Shelby built and lull away an afternoon are long gone. The fumes won’t let them.
Known as the Eagle Ford Shale play, this 400-mile-long, 50-mile-wide bacchanal of oil and gas extraction stretches from Leon County, Texas, in the northeast to the Mexican border in the southwest.
Since 2008, more than 7,000 oil and gas wells have been sunk into the brittle, sedimentary rock. Another 5,500 have been approved by state regulators, making the Eagle Ford one of the most active drilling sites in America.http://stories.weather.com/fracking
On one hand it's depressing, on the other, as heartless as it sounds, The Gadfly is inclined to just throw his hands in the air, and in exasperation ask these people, "what the fuck did you expect would happen by continuing to vote these politicians (mostly GOP'ers) who are nothing more than bought and paid for agents of the oil and gas industries, into office repeatedly?"
Get off your bigger Texas asses, stand up, organize and fight back. And the easiest place to start is by stopping the suicidal practice of putting any politician in to office who's campaign is primarily financed by the big polluters -- hell -- elect your local fucking dog catcher as your Congressman if you have to -- you certainly couldn't do much worse.
----TFG
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