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View TXsharon's blog posts
20 April 2011, 10:38 AM
How natural gas drilling in Texas threatens public health and safety

(This week, in connection with the launch of our campaign Fracking Gone Wrong: Finding a Better Way, we’ve invited some of the movement’s most prominent advocates to guest blog. Today's guest blogger is Sharon Wilson, aka TXsharon, a blogger and an organizer with Texas Oil and Gas Accountability Project. Earthjustice has worked for years alongside EARTHWORKS OGAP in Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania and other drilling states.)

Howdy, I am Sharon Wilson but most people know me as TXsharon, author of the blog, Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS that focuses on drilling issues locally, statewide, nationally and even globally. My involvement started when I noticed alarming things happening to the countryside near my property in Wise County, Texas—a smelly pit here, a smoking rig there, and leaky pipes and hoses that ended up in flowing creeks. I wrote letters to the paper, talked to neighbors and blogged as a guest until I finally started my own blog.

In 2008, my friend Don Young, founder of Fort Worth Can Do!, and I called EARTHWORKS’ Oil and Gas Accountability Project for help in reining in the out of control and largely unregulated drilling in North Texas. Shortly after an initial tour and meetings with key OGAP staff, we founded Texas Oil and Gas Accountability Project (see industry’s reaction HERE). In January 2010, I became the part-time Texas organizer.

Over the years, I have collected stories and documentation of the havoc that uncontrolled and virtually unregulated drilling and fracking are wreaking on the health and safety of the people of North Texas. I chose four of those stories, developed them into case studies and presented them in October 2010 to the EPA in North Carolina. In December, I traveled a long way from Texas and presented them in Washington, D.C.

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