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Cross Timbers Conservancy Preserving one of the least disturbed ecosystems in Texas
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Threats to the Ecosystem
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Oil Development
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In Texas and Oklahoma, oil and gas development is accepted as a necessary evil, to be tolerated and ultimately repaired. Drilling rigs, pump-jacks, and tank batteries are relatively small scale, temporary blemishes on the landscape. Damage to wildlife is relatively small. The impact on both the supply and quality of our water, however, must be monitored and controlled. Illegal disposal of waste products, including recovered saltwater, poses a continuing threat. Nevertheless, with proper monitoring and regulation, the end product of the mineral development activity currently powers our civilization and heats our homes.
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Wind Turbines
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Upon careful examination, these are exposed as government subsidized, corporate tax-avoidance schemes, pioneered by the late Ken Lay and his Enron Wind subsidiary, and their "deregulation" and "renewable energy" lobbyists. Dependent on intermittent, variable, and unpredictable wind, electrical engineers rate them as inefficient, unreliable, and uncontrollable generators of electricity, of no use in providing “dispatchable” generating capacity to meet peak demand. The independent system operator of the Texas electrical grid, ERCOT, advised the legislature in 2005 that the addition of significant numbers of wind turbines will not displace any existing sources of power, but on the contrary will require the construction of additional conventional power plants to provide required back-up, - so the lights won’t go out when the wind dies. Despite the popular myth, wind turbines will never replace a single fossil fuel or nuclear plant. See ERCOT's “Transmission Issues Associated with Renewable Energy in Texas, Informal White Paper for the Texas Legislature, 2005”, available for download at http://www.ercot.com/news/presentations/2006/RenewablesTransmissi.pdf
Health effects are initially concentrated in those with pre-existing migraine disorder and those prone to sea-sickness and vertigo, and include severe and prolonged headaches, sleeplessness, nausea, unsteadiness, and cognitive problems. The low frequency vibration, however, is in the same range that is believed to cause Vibroacoustic Disease with long-term exposure. This condition first studied in pilots and flight attendants, is characterized by a thickening or fibrosis of the soft tissues within the enclosed areas of the chest cavity and skull. With no requirements for set-backs in Texas, prolonged in-home and overnight exposures raise serious questions. See the "Publishing" section of the website of Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD, at www.ninapierpont.com, for a complete discussion and copies of her testimony in March, 2006, before the New York State Assembly Energy Committee.
Promoted by powerful corporate and financial interests seeking tax-subsidized high-returns, wind turbines provide no solution to our very real energy and environmental problems, that remain unaddressed. In reality, massive wind projects damage the environment, while falsely claiming to protect it.
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Cross Timbers Conservancy P.O. Box 246 · Forestburg, TX 76239
© 2006, all rights reserved |
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Underneath
the soils of the Western Cross Timbers of Texas, at a depth of some 8,000
feet, lies a geologic layer known as the Barnett Shale. Recent
advances in technology are allowing oil and gas producers, using millions
of gallons of water under very high
pressure, to fracture the rock and extract the hydrocarbons from the
earth. The explosion in drilling activity is despoiling formerly
undisturbed areas on the surface, while fracturing is threatening both
surface water and groundwater supplies.
But today a
new threat has emerged, masquerading as an environmental savior: Industrial scale wind projects, consisting of
hundreds of monstrous wind turbines, taller than 35-story office
buildings, with massive, permanent concrete and steel foundations,
spreading across miles of previously unaltered landscape. Confined
in the past to the some-what barren expanses of far west Texas, they are now pushing
into the Cross Timbers in search of available high-voltage transmission
capacity. Their developers intend to clear-cut roads and sites.