Former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller is not so keen on natural gas drilling coming to her city, even though she was a supporter of drilling at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.
Miller told the Texas Tribune that she now has questions on the safety of natural gas drilling after reports of earthquakes in the Barnett Shale.
"I was gung-ho as member of the DFW Airport Board [about bringing drilling out there], because it was a great income stream, and both Dallas and Fort Worth got a piece of that. But as soon as I started reading about minor earthquakes in Tarrant County [because of Barnett Shale drilling], I thought, uh oh, this sounds like a problem. They’ve made the connection now between that and fracking. If I were back on the city council, I would be cautious and [would] want to know a lot more from the people doing the investigative work on what is happening in Tarrant County."
Researchers have argued that there may be a connection between recent small earthquakes that have been recorded in the region and natural gas drilling. Earlier this year, a team of researchers said an injection well used to get rid of wastewater from natural gas drilling was a "plausible cause" of a series of small earthquakes at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport.
-Aman Batheja
