In February, about 100 citizens showed up for a hearing on oil and gas drilling regulations proposed by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. A procedural wrinkle created in January by an administrative decision of the state's incoming Governor Haslam opened the door for a second hearing on the proposed regulations, scheduled for next Thursday, April 28, 2011at 6 pm at TDEC's field office in Knoxville.
Tennessee groups that began their collaboration for the first hearing have continued meetings to discuss drilling issues in the state. Next week they'll gather again to give further testimony on specific concerns.
While much public concern about oil and gas well drilling nationwide focuses on hydrofracturing, there are many other serious issues with extraction to be addressed, such as casing deterioration of abandoned wells and damages to land and vegetation secondary to well pad construction.
This Google Earth image of a well field in Anderson County, Tennessee, is dated October 9, 2010 (eye altitude is around 27,000 feet):
The patterns made by gas and oil drilling activity are easily recognizable from the air. So far, the well fields in Tennessee are not nearly as dense as they are in other notable fields such as this one (image date: August 2006; eye altitude about 10 miles) of the Jonah field in Wyoming:
Tennesseans may be in a better place in resource extraction history than many other states where gas booms have already happened. If we get organized now to insist on strong regulations, we may be able to avoid some of the social, economic and environmental consequences that the boom-and-bust cycles of oil and gas development have imposed elsewhere.
I'll be posting more about efforts to get good oil and gas regulations for Tennessee. Today I'll end with this awesome animation from Earthjustice:
For more information on the hearing next Thursday, check out the Facebook event page.
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