DISH, Texas (AP) — Like thousands of other Texans living atop one of the country's most productive natural gas fields, folks in this tiny town were giddy when drillers started offering up the fat checks.
The mayor likened it to the Gold Rush, and many of the 200 residents of a town that once sold its name to a satellite television company were hoping to be next in a long line of landowners to strike it rich by drilling into the Texas earth.
Many in the town on the rural plains of Fort Worth didn't even bother to ask whether the drilling might sour the air above the gas-rich rock formation called the Barnett Shale. "Nobody even thought about that kind of stuff," Mayor Calvin Tillman said.
By the time state regulators started testing the air around Dish, there were 15 wells inside the town limits and more than 12,000 spread across the massive shale. Results of those tests, released late last year, found elevated levels of the cancer-causing chemical benzene near Dish, spooking residents who now fear that what once looked like found money could end up harming their health.
"I had friends of mine that got filthy rich off oil and gas companies drilling out here," said Rebecca McKamie, who wonders whether pollution is the cause of serious health problems in her family and deaths of her farm animals. "I'm not against the oil and gas industry. I'm against being poisoned."
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-gas-drilling-pollution,0,3873974.story
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