BROKEN PROMISES FOR A CHEAP PRICE

Excerpt from the Fort Worth Weekly April 25, 2012
http://www.fwweekly.com/2012/04/25/price-line/

If Mayor Price really wants to leave Fort Worth a better, greener place, a lot of folks wonder why she and the council did absolutely nothing last October when they had the chance to act on health and safety concerns over the gas drilling that has become the city’s signature industry and the source of its most bitter public debate. The injection well decision, as welcome as it was to drilling critics, was just an oily drop in the bucket of that larger fight.

The city staff, based on the findings of an air-quality study that  was itself controversial, had proposed a set of new ordinances. [Blogger Note:  The city staff knew that the proposed changes would not be accepted by industry or neighborhood leadership, which is why it was presented in such a manner]

Critics called them a weak response — but were even more flabbergasted when the council shot down even those half-measures and made no move toward stronger regulation.

Price, who promised during her campaign to look at the “hodgepodge of rules” governing gas drilling and its effect on air and water quality (“Leading Molly,” April 20, 2011), defended the decision.

She did exactly what she promised, Price told the Weekly. “We want to make sure it’s all safe. We reviewed those ordinances — and overwhelmingly, neither industry or the neighborhoods wanted the draft that came forward on those original ordinances. And there have been no studies to show that anything being done under our ordinances is dangerous.”

Not quite. Neighborhoods opposed the proposed ordinances because they were toothless, lacking any real protections for communities despite continued claims of poisoned groundwater and polluted air.

And many residents still have questions about the industry-friendly interpretation of data from the two “official studies” accepted by the city, one funded by the drilling industry and another by the city. The second air-quality study, for example, examined 375 well sites but only one that was engaged in drilling and only one where fracking was happening. (“Blowing Smoke,” Sept. 14, 2011).

Tests funded by skeptical community groups reached different conclusions. Colleyville and Southlake residents funded their own study and reported Tuesday that fracking on those cities’ borders releases dangerous levels of toxic chemicals into the air.

Price and the city council set no timetable for taking up the issue again.

Libby Willis [Fort Worth League of Neighborhoods] represents thousands of Fort Worth residents who still want the changes that the new mayor now dismisses. For now, though, Willis is giving Price the benefit of the doubt.

The longtime neighborhoods leader said she remains hopeful that the council will revisit the issue with better results. “Maybe it was a little overwhelming for them. Maybe we need to take a more incremental approach to those issues,” she said.

But Price sounds less than amenable to the idea of revisiting the ordinances and implementing gas industry regulations. “You never say never to anything, but I feel like our ordinances are very good and our communities are very safe,” she said.

Representative Lon Burnam wasn’t as charitable as Willis toward a mayor who so frequently apologizes on behalf of the gas industry. He met with her a few weeks ago and said he was “appalled” by comments she made about the industry.

“She’s extremely likable, but the proof is in the pudding when it comes to public policy,” he said. He criticized her recent 10-day trip to China to discuss the developing natural gas technology in that country. Price defended the trip, which was sponsored by the U.S. Energy Department as part of an international effort to promote energy efficiency to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

The Chinese “don’t know a lot about fracking,” Price told the Star-Telegram in December. “They’re very interested in the knowledge we have here.”

In her interview with the Weekly, Price said that natural gas is the cleanest-burning energy source, though she added that public health is always her number-one concern. [Really?]

Given the massive amounts of coal the Chinese government uses, natural gas should be seriously considered as an alternative, she said, and noted that the trip included discussions of all energy sources, including wind and solar.

“They’ve got a terrific air-quality problem — they’d kill to have days like this,” she said, pointing out the window to an atmosphere that, ironically, many local residents believe is dangerously dirty, due in significant part to gas drilling. “We’re all breathing the same air,” she said. “It’s a global world.”