The Texas Railroad Commission has ordered companies running two wastewater disposal wells near Azle to prove that the wells should remain open. The decision comes on the heels of a team of SMU researchers saying last week that Azle’s 2013 earthquake swarm was likely caused by oil and gas drilling…
DFW is one of 17 areas identified in a United States Geological Survey report released today as having a high risk for “induced seismicity.” That means we’re doing something that’s making the ground shake, namely injecting wastewater byproducts from energy gathering activities back into the ground. “This new report describes…
The 2013 earthquake swarm that centered around the town of Azle in Tarrant County was likely the result of natural gas drilling and wastewater injection, according to a report published Tuesday in the Nature Communications journal. According to Matthew Hornbach, an SMU associate professor of geophysics and lead author of…
Texas’ rapidly expanding renewable energy industry owes much of its success to, of all people, a Republican state senator from Horseshoe Bay, one who is now trying to stop cities from banning fracking. Ten years ago Senator Troy Fraser authored legislation that required that Texas get 10,000 megawatts of its…
The swarm, it seems, is still with us. Thursday, North Texas earth quaked three times. Each of the tremors struck near a two-mile line connecting Irving and West Dallas that SMU researchers Heather DeShon and Brian Stump identified in February as the start locations of numerous temblors that have inflicted…
There is nothing wrong with the way that Mansfield regulates fracking, according to the people who run Mansfield. “City leaders say the gas drilling ordinance in Mansfield is one of the most progressive and balanced ordinances in the Barnett Shale,” city leaders say in a not-so-modest news release. But some…
Newly minted Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, conveniently oblivious to the mountains of scientific evidence that people are slowly but surely turning the planet into a scorching greenhouse, isn’t sure if he believes in climate change. But he’s damn sure about the best way to address it. “I’ll leave it in…
The notorious radioactive waste dump in West Texas once run by late, politically-corrupt connected Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons could soon begin a new, more extreme phase of waste-dumping. On Friday, Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the company will seek a license to temporarily — up…
When Unfair Park’s attention was first drawn to Connect Dallas Now, a nascent marketing campaign we’ve now learned is intended to promote the Trinity toll road, we weren’t sure it was real. The effort’s Twitter account still has just four followers — including an apparently hate-following Angela Hunt — and…
The khapra beetle, considered the world’s most destructive insect, has popped up in DFW luggage screens on five different occasions in recent months. In each instance, the beetle has been found in dried food a passenger was attempting to get past customs, despite not declaring the packages of rice, dried…
SMU’s initial report of data collected from seismometors placed in Irving is interesting, provides a bit of useful context for the recent rash of quakes and promises further action. It does not, however, fill us in on what we’re all so curious about — whether or not the resource extraction…
“City loses historic tree at White Rock Lake Park,” that’s the headline on a statement sent out by the city regarding the loss of the biggest black willow tree in Texas, which, until January 30, had lived at White Rock Lake for more than 170 years. You’d think, reading that,…
Much to the benefit of downtown dogs and their owners, Harwood Park, one of the primary fixtures of the city of Dallas’ downtown park plan is one step closer to actually happening. The Belo Foundation, stepping in for a city it said doesn’t have the money to buy the properties…
Buried deep within Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus’ nearly 1,000-page budget is a measly little $2.5 million item of great interest to North Texans, the “TexNet Seismic Monitoring Program.” Unfair Park was duly excited when we first caught wind of the plan, from the Texas Tribune. Surely, we…
Bobcats almost certainly won’t eat your children; humans, even tiny ones, are too large and awful-tasting. Bobcats probably won’t eat your dog, unless your dog is a free-ranging tea-cup chihuahua that — let’s be honest — totally had it coming. They will eat your backyard chickens in a heartbeat, so…
As of Thursday, the world doomsday clock sits at 11:57. The clock is a measure created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to show just how near disaster the planet is at any given time. When the clock hits midnight, it’s all over. “In 2015, unchecked climate change, global…
Unfair Park has no idea why you might possibly be, but just in case you are, you know, looking to add an earthquake rider to your homeowners insurance or whatever, we thought we’d give State Farm a call. “There’s been a lot of increase in inquiry [about earthquake coverage],” Gary…
Calling Irving’s Thursday City Council meeting a wasted effort wouldn’t be right. The council did award the landscaping contract for O’Connor Boulevard, after all. And on the other big issue concerning Irving — earthquakes — the SMU seismologists on hand did what little they could, too. They told the assembled…
This earthquake thing is, at the very least, getting weird. A 2.6 magnitude quake shook the area near the former Texas Stadium site in Irving just after 8:30 Wednesday morning. It was the 10th earthquake to shudder the site since Tuesday. Before 2008, there was exactly one recorded earthquake in…
About 20 minutes ago, we felt it at the Observer offices in Oak Lawn. Now, the United States Geological survey verifies that the mid-afternoon rumble was, in fact, an earthquake. According to the USGS, the epicenter of this quake was, as so many have been in the last six weeks…
At this point, they’re not even a nuisance. The repeated small earthquakes that Dallas felt throughout 2014 haven’t caused any serious property damage or injuries. The quakes are a curiosity. They are happening more frequently, though, especially in Irving. Of the 27 earthquakes in 2014 , the last eight occurred…
Every winter, the world’s only flock of wild whooping cranes flies into Texas and stays along the Texas Gulf Coast, using water near the Aransas Pass. Maybe one day in the future, Greg Abbott can require the whopping cranes to obtain a permit before they take advantage of our state’s…
