Here is the letter I will be sending to Ft Worth City Government. I urge you to do the same:
Dear Mayor and City Council Members
As the elected representatives of this community, you should be working with the best interests of the residents of Fort Worth at heart when you make decisions. Sadly, I do not believe that is the case. It does not appear that our health, our property values, or the general livability of this city are even considered when the highly risky plans of your gas industry cronies are approved.
Allowing injection wells within city limits is a terribly misguided proposal. I assume it will pass. The local government seems to be run by lobbyists and shills for an industry that puts profit over all else. You do not have the right to claim you are working for the people's best interests unless you are spending your energy and voice defending us against the scourge of urban Natural Gas Drilling (if you are doing so quietly, thank you!). This injection well plan will exacerbate the poor air quality and rapidly declining livability of this city.
I run a small graphic and web design business. As soon as I can get my house sold or rented (to some poor uneducated soul) I will be taking my creative capital and energy elsewhere. If you think that enthusiastic young people and creative entrepreneurs like myself will continue to move to this area, you are mistaken. The air may be almost
as bad in Dallas, but at least they have a decent public transportation system. In the coming years, shale communities will likely become home to mostly poor and undereducated folks who havn't the ability to leave. Cancer clusters will clog the medical system and respiratory diseases will stunt childrens' futures. What educated and ambitious person would risk their family for a City that sold out its citizens for a brief profit boom?
Furthermore, it would seem that the current City Council and the previous Mayor did not even negotiate a good deal (for the City) in exchange for the gamble. Closed libraries and pools, water rationing, lousy public transportation, no apparent plan for post-fracking clean up, monitoring, or safe long term waste disposal. It is shocking. For short term gain, you have gambled away the futures of the citizens you were hired to represent.
As a tax-payer, voter, and concerned citizen of the Barnett Shale I beg you all to do the job you were hired to do: make decisions that best serve the interests of your constituents - all of them. I guess the question is who ARE your constituents? Us or Corporate Energy interests.
Please say NO to Injection Wells.
