Shale Survival in Denton
There’s been quite a bit of concern about the fracking near
Southlakes Park. This is in addition to the fracking at Vintage/S. Bonnie –
both by EagleRidge. For those wanting to know where to turn with questions and
complaints, let me point you to TX Sharon’s very helpful Shale Survival Tools,
which include information on Who to Call When Things
Go Wrong. You can also find helpful information at Denton’s
Gas Well Inspection Division.
If you are interested in the policy background of the
Southlakes wells, you can check out my
earlier post about that. You can also learn about how these wells (and the
Vintage/S. Bonnie ones) were permitted
by the City in a standstill agreement…even though at least three wells
permitted seem to violate our ordinance.
I went out to look at these two fracking sites today and here
are some pics and videos.
Here you can see them pulling water out of a city fire
hydrant. Judging by all the hoses out there, it seemed like they might be using
a couple of hydrants. Most likely they take this water to fill a frack pond. EagleRidge regularly uses upwards of six million gallons of water to frack each well. This good, clean water will be forever tainted and dumped 10,000 feet below the surface where it will stay (hopefully) in the Ellenburger formation.
Here are a couple of videos at Southlakes Park. The smell
was nauseating and the noise has got neighbors wondering if a train engine is
parked nearby.
Here is a pic and video from Vintage. I spoke with the nice
security guard at the Vintage pad site about why they had suddenly stopped
fracking and put up this workover rig. He said they were not done fracking –
something had gone wrong that required them to deviate from plans for a while.
He was not at liberty to say anything more about that subject. But he did give
me his take on energy policy, saying that you can’t complain about oil and
gas development unless you first relinquish your heater, your electricity, and your
car.
With a 100+years supply of natural gas in storage, I don't buy that I must give up my car and furnace to end the travesty of drilling taking place in Denton right now. I believe this gas is bound for far away shores where the price is much higher. Our brighter future lies in alternative forms of energy production - solar, [more wind], etc. But the future is grim through this waste of natural resources and the waste and pollution it creates. Even if you believed the nonsensical argument that drilling is a matter of national security, why does that security lie in the huge losses of certain homeowners and all of us who breathe the air and drink the water?
ReplyDeleteYes. All of this looks very familiar. They hook the meters and hoses up to the fire hydrants and pump the water into nearby fresh water FRAC Ponds. We've watched it done that way in our area as well. Cities often charge them more than regular construction uses but that's just what we've noted. If they don't have a FRAC Pond then they often use water pipelines. They are using our city water just like all construction use. Shameful since this water is destroyed and cannot be returned to the water cycle. It doesn't all stay down there, either.
ReplyDeleteIt comes back up with the gas as flowback (5-20% of the water) and then as produced water for the life of the well. The contaminated, produced water is stored in the Produced Water Tanks on the pad site and in our neighborhoods. The tanks are emptied when they fill up...or are supposed to be emptied when they fill up. All that contaminated water is then trucked to injection wells for disposal ~ the same injection wells that are causing all the earthquakes. This toxic stuff is being stored right next to our homes and inside our neighborhoods in these tanks.