TEXAS: Headed Back To The Stone Age

H

Howey

Banned
This is what happens when you don't have enough money to fix your roads.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/08/19/conversion-of-roads-to-gravel-met-with-concern/

The sharp increase in heavy traffic from a historic oil boom has damaged many farm-to-market roads in South and East Texas. The damage related to energy development has become so extensive that state and local authorities lack the funding to make all the repairs. Last month, the Texas Department of Transportation announced plans to convert more than 80 miles of paved roads to gravel. The conversions are expected to start Monday, TxDOT officials said. But the plan has been met with criticism from lawmakers and some of the farmers and ranchers who live near those roads.

"Since paving roads is too expensive and there is not enough funding to repave them all, our only other option to make them safer is to turn them into gravel roads," TxDOT spokesman David Glessner said.
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Some self-inflicted drought to go with your dirt roads:


With some 30 Texas communities in danger of going dry before the end of the year, it's becoming more difficult to ignore the fact that the fracking boom, however welcome, comes at a high cost. It is a powerful drain on local water supplies.

The people of Barnhart, a tiny West Texas community near San Angelo, are certainly paying attention. Thanks to fracking's outsized water demands, the town well has gone dry. The town's water crisis brings to mind another old saw: "The prospect of being hanged focuses the mind wonderfully."

In Barnhart, where a severe and lingering drought already had put a strain on the water supply, minds are focused these days, though not so wonderfully.

A recent story in the Guardian noted that ranchers have had to dump their herds, farmers have lost their crops and residents are being forced to live with water rationing. In addition, the area aquifer is being strained.

Still, the oil industry continues to demand water, and those with water on their land are still willing to sell it.

Texas shale producers used about 25 billion gallons of water last year, and with more and more drilling in the Eagle Ford Formation, that figure will continue to grow. In some West Texas and South Texas counties - almost invariably drought-stricken counties - fracking accounts for 10 to 25 percent of water use and is projected to pass 50 percent in the future. Every month, oil and gas companies dispose of 290 million barrels of wastewater from fracking. That's the equivalent of 18,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools, Luke Metzger of Environment Texas points out. That's water that can never be used again - in a drought-debilitated state, no less.

Texas water crisis​
 
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