Gasland America

My name is Will and for the past 15 years, my family and I have live in Double Oak, Texas (pop 2700) which lies between Dallas and Fort Worth; 18 miles north of DFW airport.

The semi rural lifestyle attracted my wife Lavada and I to this town back in 1995 to raise our four children. We made our home in the big city of Dallas prior to the move. Over the years we have seen much "progress" in the upscale suburbs of southern Denton County. During this time, the semi-rural atmosphere slowly gave way to the housing boon and megabox retail establishments that now are only a stone's throw away. With new developments in the area, the region of southern Denton County became a moderately dense suburbia . Double Oak is predominately middle class area and picturesquely nestled among several upscale planned communities.

Recently, Gas drilling has come to our town and many residents have either signed over their mineral rights to drillers while others like us were forced to wait out the economic recession of 2008/2009. Our town has five gas wells with plans for 22 more and a large compression facility. And that's just for the west side of our little town of 2700. Gas drilling pad sites numbering in the hundreds litter the landscape in southern part of the county. And all this has been accomplished with no environmental regulations in place since the industry is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Over the course a couple of years, while we waited for the economy to rebound, my attitude about cashing in on the gas boon changed. As I talked to various individuals and read news reports of unhappy area residents, the trend toward discussing the negative impact of gas drilling seemed to overshadow the excitement of new found wealth. Then I recalled something my father once told me as he discussed his childhood.

Around age of 14 he worked in the 9 Mile Point Coal Mine near his hometown of Cwmfelinfach, Wales, U.K. and it was common practice to use small pet shop birds to detect dangerous methane gas in the mine. If the bird died suddenly, the men were to escape the mine as soon as possible.

My father's family originally migrated from the valleys of south Wales in the mid 1920's when the 9 Mile Point Coal Mine closed due to a labor strike and my grandfather was out of work. He worked in the mines all of life and had to endure the unsafe work conditions as most miners did during that time. While mining accidents claimed the lives of many friends and brothers, an accident never claimed his life directly, however black lung disease caught up to him soon enough. He died shortly before the Great Depression.

I never met my grandfather, but I recall the stories my father told of life in Wales in the early part of the twentieth century and the hardships they all endured. Coal dust permeated the air in and around the small Welsh village and as children he and his siblings often slept with coal dust on their pillows.

In 2006, I took my father's cremated remains back to the little village by the river in the green valley and placed them atop of his grandfather's resting place in the Babel Chapel cemetery. This small community was home to 19th century preacher/poet William Thomas (Islwyn), whose verse extolled the working man and inspired social reform during the industrial revolution.

Today as I ponder that collective of ordinary people I call Gasland America, I think about that peaceful little valley as it may have been a hundred years ago, layered black with coal dust and the Sirhowy river flowing dark with runoff from the mine; it's water unsafe to drink. Those days seem unimaginable, but history often repeats itself. The one difference is benzene, xylene and other toxic and carcinogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) won't wash off your pillow.

The parallel I draw between a small village in Wales a hundred years ago and a little town in Texas today is too familiar. My father's childhood experience tells me that there is a lesson to be learned about allowing industry to mandate the lives of ordinary men.

Some individuals may profit, but most will not. Who will be the ones to remain on the tainted land?

It's a terrible legacy we leave our children to allow an industry to take control of unwilling and lay waste to the land and all beneath it.

Please support the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act of 2009 .

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