What happened to Cowtown?

The e-mail and link to an article in Fort Worth Weekly were sent from Don Young of fwcando.org.

Local government is our saving grace since our state government can't physically regulate this industry. The gas and oil industry has become too big for the Texas Railroad Commission to monitor. The TRC elected officials are allowed to take election campaign donations from the very industry they are suppose to regulate.
http://stopthedrilling.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-many-gas-wells-in-state-of-texas.html

It is important that we all continue to pressure our local government to protect our towns. That means adopting strong Oil & Gas Ordinances and enforcing them. Some towns have done just that but many have a way to go. We have watched Fort Worth suffer for the last few years. Don't let the industry turn our towns into another Midland.

Don Young's words say it all "without vigilance, your town could be next"

It has been very frustrating to witness my hometown, Fort Worth, Texas, being transformed into an oil and gas town in three short years. Besides the usual list of environmental and safety concerns, there is also a new level of greed that concerns me. Not your average everyday greed, but one of a slightly different shade.

Consequently, there is now a united front by the "establishment" to ignore all these concerns and embrace gas drilling almost as if drilling is an entrenched part of our heritage, a kind of bookend to our western, cowboy heritage, a rewriting of history.

I don't really blame them. What else can the Chamber of Commerce do? Gas drilling is here to stay. Thanks to Mayor Moncrief, ex-Mayor Barr and a handful of others gas drilling IS entrenched now. The heritage is just beginning and so are the problems.

I tried to address this collective faux-amnesia phenomena and the hybrid greed factor that has accompanied it in a essay I wrote for the current issue of the Fort Worth Weekly. The names I named of various cultural, educational and civic organizations are just the tip of the iceberg of influential groups that are participating in this grand delusion we call urban gas drilling.
This ain't the Cowtown I was born in. Without vigilance, your town could be next.
DY

Click on the link to read Don's article
http://www.fwweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2041:learning-to-love-big-gas&catid=3:second-thought&Itemid=374