A Texas Mayor with a Warning for Pennsylvania

Transcript

Pennsylvania, according to a mayor of a small Texas town 50 miles northwest of Dallas. He says it may come from the natural gas industry. The Allegheny Front's Katelyn Malongowski reports.

DISH, Texas, population 180, sits atop the Barnett Shale, a deeply buried rock formation that contains natural gas, just as many towns in Pennsylvania and New York sit above the Marcellus Shale. Drilling has been going on for years in DISH. The town has treatment facilities and compressor stations, which five gas companies operate. These plants are located both within corporate limits and nearby.

DISH's mayor, Calvin Tillman, says citizens initially became concerned about the air quality when cedar trees near one of the facilities were dying.

"The manner that they die, it's very interesting. It really raises your eyebrows because it's like they start dying from the top. And it's just brown incrementally down like you have acid rain or something."

This led the town to fund an independent study of the air. It found that levels of 16 air toxins were above standards established by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. They include several carcinogens, like Benzene, and volatile neurotoxins.

Tillman blames the natural gas facilities for the pollution. In particular, the treatment facilities.

"They take a lot of the impurities out, which end up in our air, which is I believe where we get the benzene and some of the harsh chemicals that are coming out of the gas."

However, two gas companies have spoken publicly about the issue. An Atmos Energy spokesperson told the Dallas Morning News that they believe they do not make significant contributions of chemical emissions that were listed in the study.

Regardless, Tillman says he wants to better regulate the gas and chemical emissions. But he's afraid that some of the problems can't be fixed.

"Since the report come out, we started doing a health assessment. And some of the results of the health assessment are pretty disturbing. And some of the damage, which may or may not be related to this, but certainly could be, I don't know if that can be undone."

Tillman says DISH residents have complained about smelling natural gas, feeling nauseated and getting headaches.

"We brought this to the attention of the industry, and also of the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality, which has regulatory oversight responsibilities of this industry. And they all said that we had nothing to worry about. All we were smelling was deodorant that was added to the natural gas."

So he is using DISH as a warning for Pennsylvania and New York.

"Keep this in mind, because there's gonna be compressor stations right around the corner from people up there. And so this needs to be kept in mind cause you're gonna have the same sort of problems. There's compressor sites all around the United States, and it's very likely that they're gonna be emitting the same toxins that ours is."

Tillman says he wants the facilities both inside and outside his town to be shutdown until emissions can be better controlled, but he hasn't had much luck yet.

For the Allegheny Front, I'm Katelyn Malongowski.