Learning from Fort Worth

The Shreveport Times, which sits amid the Haynesville Shale, continues its series of stories about the impact of Barnett Shale gas drilling on Fort Worth.

We like these stories because they offer a fresh perspective on the Barnett Shale (and because the Shreveport reporters bought lunch for your humble bloggers when they visited town earlier this year).

Here's two stories from Sunday:

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008811300321

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008811300323

And two from Monday:

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812010309

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812010310

Comments

[GW Angerstein]

Waking up this AM I found surveyors hired by a gas drilling company surveying part of my yard. When I ask, Who are you? What are you doing? The four unknown men in an unmarked white pickup make eye contact with each other but not me. They go on working as if I am an invisible unwelcome visitor haunting their busy day. I ask for a permit or permission from the City of Watauga where I live. They reported that they had no permit or permission and did not need either to operate in the neighborhood or the city.
Upon investigation I find these men are surveying our quiet subdivision for a gas pipeline, big trucks, the smell of diesel, and fouled water. What a beautiful morning it was... City of Watauga reports no one in charge knows anything of such activity.
What a fool are we to think this is the American we know and love! Where has American gone? Lost to big money, corporations who rape the land, water, and air that once belonged to citizen families who must live on the land, drink the water, breath the air. Shame on our city! Shame on our country! Shame on ourselves! Shame on big brother business for allowing this to happen in America. Who among us is our brother's keeper? Brother's keeper? But a distant fading memory!
Jonathan Swift once wrote about eating the children of England for the public good. Who today would be surprise if America revises Mr. Swift's "Modest Proposal." Perhaps more humane to eat Twenty-First Century children than to leave them living a legacy of misery breathing blighted air, drinking foul water in the ethical wasteland once known as "The Great Democracy." America where search and seizure of homestead is now legal in disguise of doing the public a greater good. Perhaps it is not too late for citizen families to rise in protest and say, NO! No to big machines that foul air, water, and lay waste to our neighborhoods in the name of Lord Money. The voice of the children may yet rejoice over might,machine,money and "Barnett-Shale-Drilling-Rites." Perhaps not. Perhaps cannabalism is the better choice.