Ordinances and Gas Royalties - One man's blessing - many others cursed ePluribus Media - USA From an online discussion of proposed gas drilling ordinance in Arlington Tx:
"The New London School explosion was cause by a leak of unscented natural gas which cost the life of a generation of school children. ..."
Accident - What isn't expected to happen.
It is important to remember that accidents are what happens when people don't expect anything to happen. Even though we are told "that it is safe," that "accidents are rare," and we "have nothing to worry about", there is no one that can assure us that an accident won't happen. Three very vivid examples are etched in my mind. The New London School explosion was cause by a leak of unscented natural gas which cost the life of a generation of school children. It led to the requirement of adding a chemical to gas to give it a scent. However, sometimes the scent is filtered out in the soil. The explosion in Cleburne which cost Hazel Pawlik's her life and injured several famil members was one where witnesses have testified that there was no scent of gas in the house before it blew up. The couple noted that when they lit a match they got flares like you get when you open a flame on a stove. The house was all electric. It was determined that gas collected in the sewer system from a leak in a natural gas pipeline.
A similar event occurred while I was living in Grand Prairie. Residents reported the scent of gas in their neighborhood but the gas company was unable to locate a gas leak. I only lived a few blocks from the edge of that devastated neighborhood. It was a neighborhood of well maintained modest three bedroom homes where many familes had lived for 20 to 30 years. After gas leaked into the sewer system, and exploded, that neighborhood (a ten block radius) looked like an atomic bomb had hit it. Homes were condemned for ten blocks. Most were considered total losses by the insurance companies.
The gas company said "it couldn't happen". People believed it wouldn't happen. Even after it occurred, engineers argued that it was a "freak occurrence" and not something that anyone could "expect to happen again here or elsewhere." Driving through that neighborhood convinced me that we need to exercise extra caution. Just because we're told that "it can't happen" or "it won't happen" doesn't mean that it "hasn't happened" or it "won't really happen." Having seen what occurred in New Boston and Grand Prairie and Cleburne, I don't think mixing school children and gas drilling is a good combination. I don't think doubling and tripling and quadrupling the miles of pipelines underneath a densely populated city is a smart. I don't think billions of dollars of royalties is a good enough trade for increasing the risk to children, families and fellow citizens... Read more at http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2007/7/24/2355/26300
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