Excerpt
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Now, as shale and natural gas fracking booms in Texas, there are new questions about its possible connection with air quality and health problems.
That’s the focus of a new report jointly done by the Center for Public Integrity, Inside Climate News, and The Weather Channel. It specifically looked at drilling in a huge area known as the Eagle Ford Shale Play, where, as you can see, the oil wells are in green dots, gas wells in red.
It examined almost 300 health complaints in the region potentially linked to fracking. The industry is disputing the report.
Jim Morris is one of the journalists who worked on it for the Center for Public Integrity.
Welcome to the program.
JIM MORRIS, Center for Public Integrity: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, just a little bit of background. How much drilling of this kind is going on in this South Texas area and why did you decide to look at the air quality issue?
JIM MORRIS: There are about 8,000 wells that have already been drilled in the Eagle Ford Shale, which is about 20,000 square miles. Another 5,000 or so have been permitted or online.
We chose to look at the Eagle Ford specifically because it has not been part of the national conversation on fracking. And we looked at air because so much focus has been put understandably on contaminated water that we felt it was time to look at air pollution.
No comments:
Post a Comment