Third World Texas
Once again, and this is at least the fourth time this year, the good people of beautiful Corpus Christi, Texas, are being told not to drink the water, cook with it, brush your teeth or even bathe in it. Boiling it won’t do any good.
No other information has been provided and several of my friends didn’t get the news until after their morning shower and teeth brushing. Schools have been closed.
Corpus’s economy is driven by the oil and petrochemical industry, which, according to Rick Perry, need less regulation.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry – well, that scares the peewahdoodle outta me.
Thanks to my friends in Corpus for the heads up.
But, but, but, Corpus’s water comes from Lake Corpus Christi, just above wonderful downtown Mathis, next to the metropolis of Lagarto.
There’s FISH and SNEKS and thangs in there, even gators.
And they all pee and crap in the water!! Nasty, nasty! Far more bad for you, right?
PS: Somebody needs to invent a new Kochtail beverage…some genyuwhine Russky vodka, a few parts alkanes and fractionated hydrocarbons, a dash of distillates and dilbit, natgas carbonation for a little fizz, a sprig of poison ivy, shaken not stirred…Ahhhhh, how refreshing.
1NPR reports that the city suspects an oil-based chemical, from somewhere in the industrial area, due to back flow into the water system. But the voters have spoken, and deregulation is the watchword for the future. Schools are closed, too, possibly a fringe benefit for the Trumpians as more science knowledge probably leads to people being less keen on consumption of oil byproducts in their food and water.
2Nothing a simple name change can’t solve.
When the bodies start piling up:
Welcome To Corpus Hominum!
3Ocean & Bay Views To Die For!
We will be seeing lots more of this as the Rethugs take over.
4Big business without regulation means death.
Sandridge’s Kochtail reminds me of “Erin Brockovich.” They’re in the conference room meeting with the bad guys. As the meeting closes Erin informs them that the water they’ve been drinking comes from the company’s not-polluted water. They turn a little gray. Bwahahahahahaha!
5I happened to be in Corpus for a wedding (yes, on a Wednesday). Last night after the reception, we went back to the hotel, where we were told not to use the water at all, not for showering or teeth brushing. Luckily we had a couple bottles of spring water with us, so we could brush teeth.
This morning, we watched a press conference on the local news channel. The spokeswoman said it was an asphalt emulsifier that was injected into a pump, but “someone made a mistake” and it got into the water supply. The desk clerk at the hotel told us this was the third time this year that they’ve had a no-tap-water warning.
6Heard on a local news report that a complicating factor for the water districts, emergency groups, and political people like mayors, is that the now identified pollutant is a “proprietary” compound and the company that makes it is refusing to advise anyone about what chemicals are in their “witches brew” that endangers many thousands.
And this obstruction, even with an immediate danger and gigantic inconvenience for hundreds of thousands of innocent US citizens, is perfectly LEGAL under current law.
It is similar to previous incidents involving O&G fracking fluids, they don’t have to friggin’ tell you what they’re poisoning you with!
Buck it up, buttercup.
FYI: The Eagle Ford Shale Play actively frack-drilling region is just a ways north of the Corpus Christi area, and stretches in a generally SW to NE direction from within Mexico, through Laredo, and clear into East Texas (about 500 miles long by 25 to 120 miles wide). I live in the middle and it has radically changed the region.
FYI2: Typical South Texas place- Lagarto, TX (been there, means “alligator or lizard”, depending on translation):
7http://texasescapes.com/SouthTexasTowns/Lagarto-Texas.htm
Sandridge–I have a history in petroleum engineering (not as an engineer) and I’ve seen petroleum engineers drink frac fluids. They really are mostly water and sand or ceramic beads; the water builds enough pressure to cause the crack (fracture), and the sand or beads holds the frac open.
The bigger problem is that they use only *potable* (drinkable) water because other junk in the water could clog up the fractures (they’re only a few millimeters wide). That means the industry is dumping water that could be used for drinking and fertilizing, and they’re hauling it over public roads (and water weighs something like 10 lbs/gal). That’s sucking up water we need for drinking and growing crops and tearing up our highways. They pump most of it back out after the frac, but then it does have oil and gas from the well in it, so they pump *that* into disposal wells–taking it out of the water supply. What goes down isn’t dangerous; what comes back is just too much water to be valuable as hydrocarbons and too much hydrocarbon to be usable as water. Nothing “scary” in any of it.
I’m still left of middle on whether fracking is causing earthquakes, but moving lefter at a fairly steady pace. Correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation, but the correlation seems to be getting stronger there.
8djw, I’ll respect your “history” in petroleum, but you’re sure understating some of this.
However, there is a whole lot more “stuff” in those frack fluids/drilling muds than water and sand.
Diesel fuel is a usual constituent, along with quantities of various other substances, boron, surfactants, wetting agents, etc. Proprietary “witches brews”, many different blends for different purposes, that each fluid producer rabidly protects their formulae of, for competitive reasons.
And yes, of course they are using huge quantities of ‘good’ water in these processes. There has been a lot of friction over that issue (with people’s wells running dry or getting polluted. An area where these “proprietary” fluids comes into play– it’s hard to prove THEY did it if you don’t-can’t know their formula ‘mix’..
But Texas (and other states no doubt) has much ancient “right of capture” settled law that allows a land or mineral rights owner to pump out as much water (or other ‘stuff’) as they please.
As far as fracking well drill ops themselves as a major source of man-made earthquakes, it’s true this is still being studied, although it can be a contributing factor in some EQ’s.
But, the multiple associated deep-well high-pressure injection disposal of the huge quantities of “produced” waste water and byproducts has been proved irrefutably to cause earthquakes.
The drilling and disposal technologies are locked together, you can’t drill large numbers of these wells without producing huge quantities of wastewater that has to be disposed of.
Granted, if the oil industry could get away with it (hint, hint…) they would simply dump it into our rivers and streams, or on land and wait for some of it to evaporate.
Current laws and EPA procedures (hint, hint…) make them utilize the ‘safer’ deep-well injection disposal methods.
For a perfect example, just look into the studies centered on Oklahoma’s recent, now very active, earthquake history.
(I live with the impacts of this major Eagle Ford frackworld, and economic boom. I used to religiously read “The Oil Drum” when it was active. And a kinfolk is a petroleum engineer and I’ve watched the telemetry feed-display of actual horizontal drilling operations-it’s fascinating to watch the depiction of the borehole, drillhead, and all the data from the bore in real-time as it drills and displays a 3D map of the progress far below.
9Hell, we even have a uranium processing plant nearby (upwind too), and also uranium production wells in the area (which use a similar ‘frack’ type technique).)
Forgot to mention: That nearby uranium processing plant’s final output product is the infamous “Yellowcake”, a concentrated but fairly weakly radioactive substance. It’s shipped off for further refining elsewhere. (waiting to find out if there is ever an ‘accident’ whether we’ll even be notified, a little different from when things go “boom”)
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