A single mom living in the country outside of Fort Worth got bullied by gas drillers years ago and made it her mission to fight against Big Oil’s intrusion into people’s lives. A decade later, Sharon Wilson is still leading the charge, taking on drillers, lawmakers, and inattentive (to the point of being complicit) regulators.
Many regular folks find themselves thrust into the role of activist simply by being overrun by industrial Goliaths and choosing to pull out a slingshot rather than running, hiding, or doing nothing.
Wilson’s blog posts at Bluedaze cover everything from the recent well mishap in Arlington to the legislative bills seeking to strip municipalities of home rule to the latest example of how the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality practices lackadaisical policing. Yes, her blog posts lack balance. She’s more activist writer than a reporter. Then again, most everything out of the mouths of drillers, regulators, and the lawmakers who carry their buckets is biased as well.
The Fort Worth Weekly has recognized the efforts of many local residents who stand up to industrial intrusions into their home lives. Wilson is among the hardest working of all, still speaking up with passion for the many thousands of people who’ve had their lives turned upside down by drillers.
Here what Wilson has to say about the Texas Senate and House bills that weaken the rights of cities to control drilling inside their own city limits:
“Today’s passage of CSHB40 makes clear that, even when it comes at the expense of democracy, the Texas Legislature works for the oil and gas industry and not ordinary Texans. Legislators who voted for this bill just voted against democracy. Texas has a proud history of citizens determining their own fate. It’s called local control, and the Texas House just voted to end it. If this becomes law, Texans will be forced to live with whatever the oil and gas industry considers ‘commercially reasonable’. It imposes state authority where cities should have the right to decide. And Texas regulators’ track record of ignoring community impacts is as long as it is shameful.
CSHB40 is big government at its worst.”
Greedheads will be greedheads….what’s new here? Jesus had lots to say about this problem. What’s new here?
Jeff: So perhaps we should have each city have its own set of motor vehicle laws? It is not local control you want. What you want is to stop fracking completely. Bet you do not think capitalism is a good economic system.
The oil and gas industry would have pipes running over our houses in order to get a little richer, I have come to conclude they own the government. Both here in Texas and in DC, tied in a neat little bow.
Thank you so much, Jeff.
Although it may not seem like it with the passage of HB40, we are making progress. The fact that HB40 was written and over $5 million in bribe money paid to lawmakers by the fracking mafia, is testimony to the strength of fracking opposition.
There are now a whole bunch of voters in cities throughout North Texas who are committed to firing their representatives who voted against local control. The 70% straight ticket Republican voters who voted for the Denton fracking ban have to be wondering why Myra Crownover betrayed them.
The industry has won nothing in HB40. They have only made more enemies.
Get over yourselves. We need the energy. Fracking done correctly does little harm compared to the reward. Most who oppose fracking also oppose capitalism and will lose.
Dear Gary,
Have you ever seen fracking done correctly? I’ve seen way more fracking than most people and I have never seen it done correctly.
In 2002, I wrote letters asking operators to frack on my land but that was before I witnessed the horrible impacts all around me. I’m a mineral owner and I really like money. But I like safe water and air more.
I saw so many horrible impacts that I went to work for Earthworks in May of 2011. Now I’m a certified FLIR camera operator and have traveled all over the country with the FLIR camera as part of Earthworks’ Citizen Empowerment Project. http://www.earthworksaction.org/voices/detail/citizens_empowerment_project#.VTKU2hfWpRk I can tell you that everywhere I go the story is the same. People suffer from industry abuse and so does our planet.
It’s true that we need energy. That’s why I got solar panels and an EPA rated wood burning stove. I was warm through some of the coldest winters Texas has seen and cool during the brutal summers. My solar panels sit on my roof generating electricity and they haven’t exploded, contaminated anyone’s air of caused any harm.
It’s so easy to say “get over yourselves” if you aren’t one suffering impacts.
Mr Liniger’s statement above “Fracking done correctly does little harm compared to the reward'” is an oxymoron IMHO. There is no correct way to frack. The damage to people’s health and quality of life, the air, water supply, property values, and the earth itself just to name a few, far outweigh any “reward”
Thank you Fort Worth Weekly for recognizing and commending Sharon Wilson for her unending work she does to make Texas (and the country) a better, cleaner, and healthier place for all of us to live.
To both Sharons: You both speil bs. We are on this earth to conquer nature not submit to it. Neither of you will admit that what you really want is the end to capitalism. Albeit we do need to properly regulate fracking. We do NOT need to end it.
All this time I’ve been doing it wrong. I thought I was here to live hard, love fast, die young and leave a beautiful memory.
I have been politically left since way before I was born. Open your eyes and smell the coffee Dude, 99.99% of thoughful, decent humans are stone liberals. We don’t need an end to capitalismn, but we sorely need an end to jerk-off half-wits and Tea-Bagging, self-satisfied, rich newspaper owners. There’s nothing new here, same old story.
Trammell S Crow is embarrassed by GOP’s slowness to confront climate change. http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/sunday-commentary/20151219-point-person-our-qa-with-green-republican-trammell-s.-crow.ece