It's Earth Day. It's good that there is a day to remind some that it is important to be kinder to Mother Earth. However that "some" are already in the choir singing about environmentalism and conservation. Hopefully more join the choir each Earth Day each year. The real work though happens the other 364 days of the year. That's especially critical now in the State of Texas which is sponsored by the oil and gas industry and whose legislators for the most part are bought and paid for by the oil and gas industry.
Forget the will of voters in local municipalities. In last November's election, the people of Denton, Texas voted to ban fracking in their town. Now House Bill 40 is racing through the legislature. That bill will ban bans. According to Nicholas Sakilaris: "The controversial bill gives the Texas Railroad Commission authority to preempt city laws when it comes to subsurface oil and gas operations, including hydraulic fracking." Read Bill that would ban fracking bans breezes through the Texas House.
What you should also read is the public relations propaganda put out by the Texas Oil and Gas Association. (Let's call them "Lola" as in "whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.") Be sure that you watch the video. George Orwell could not have done better.
Despite the above bad news, the El Paso Commissioners Court seems poised to pass an anti-fracking resolution. Judge Veronica Escobar favors it and the matter will come to a vote at next week's meeting.
Mike Mecke emailed this news brief from Texas Agriculture Law Blog:
Breaking News: US Files Brief in Texas v. New Mexico Lawsuit
Posted: 11 Dec 2013 02:42 PM PST
The Solicitor General, on behalf of the United States, filed a 33-page brief today in the Supreme Court battle over water between Texas and New Mexico. In April, the Supreme Court requested input from the United States on whether it should grant Texas’ motion to file a complaint and hear the case.
Newspapers, including the Albuquerque Journal, are reporting that the brief takes a middle-ground approach by encouraging the Court to hear the case, but also by allowing New Mexico a chance of having the case dismissed early on in the litigation. [Read article HERE.] I have been unable to obtain a copy of the United States’ brief today, but will post a link as soon as one is available.
In the proposed lawsuit, Texas claims that New Mexico’s issuance of groundwater permits in southern New Mexico between the Elephant Butte Reservoir and the Texas state line is draining the Rio Grande and depriving Texas of the water that it is owed under the 1938 Rio Grande Compact. New Mexico claims that the Compact requires only delivery into Elephant Butte, with which New Mexico has complied, and that it does not address groundwater pumping issues, which are a matter of purely state law. To read a more detailed explanation of the dispute, click HERE.
Read the story on Grist: A Texan tragedy: Ample oil no water
Same story with picture of a cow
Queries:
Thinking of the many incarnations of petroleum (fuel, fertilizer for the agri-industry that stocks the shelves of all of our stores, plastics, fabrics for clothing and other things), what can each of us do to reduce the need for more oil?
Should there be restrictions on fracking including outright banning the practice?
Should there be restrictions put on private property for the public good or more land acquired to be public land with restrictions?
Should everyone have water rights?
Should the right of capture be stopped?
If you are a farmer, do you have the right to raise water-hungry crops in areas like West Texas with low rainfall?
