Suzanne Goldenberg writes
fracking boom are sucking away precious water from beneath the ground, leaving cattle dead, farms bone-dry and people thirsty:
McGuire saw the warning signs before the town well went dry: sand in the toilet bowl, the sputter of air in the tap, a pump working overtime to no effect. But it still did not prepare her for the night last month when she turned on the tap and discovered the tiny town where she had made her home for 35 years was out of water.
"The day that we ran out of water I turned on my faucet and nothing was there and at that moment I knew the whole of Barnhart was down the tubes," she said, blinking back tears. "I went: 'dear God help us. That was the first thought that came to mind."
Across the south-west, residents of small communities like Barnhart are confronting the reality that something as basic as running water, as unthinking as turning on a tap, can no longer be taken for granted.
Three years of drought, decades of overuse and now the oil industry's outsize demands on water for fracking are running down reservoirs and underground aquifers. And climate change is making things worse.
In Texas alone, about 30 communities could run out of water by the end of the year, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Nearly 15 million people are living under some form of water rationing, barred from freely sprinkling their lawns or refilling their swimming pools. In Barnhart's case, the well appears to have run dry because the water was being extracted for shale gas fracking.
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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—Rick Perry continues to announce imminent presidential announcement:
We already know there was going to be an announcement from the Rick Perry camp, because they had previously announced they would be announcing something, so this is hardly a surprise ... but do you think maybe Rick Perry might be milking this a bit much?
Any parent probably knows this behavior. Hey mom! Dad! Watch me! I'm gonna do something! Watch me! Watch me! Mom! Dad! Are you paying attention? Okay, I'm gonna do it! Here I go! Are you watching?
Seeing it from grown men and women just gets creepy. I'm not sure which of the stages of announcing your candidacy for president Perry is on, but I have a feeling he's going to invent some whole new ones before this is over.
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Tweet of the Day:
Damned editors, I can't even leave a FB comment without endlessly debating the correct placement of the dependent clause.
— @notlikenormal
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