Thursday, January 13, 2011

CPANA Board to Increase Air Quality Efforts in Lewisville

As you know, for the past 6 months, CPANA has been doing some baseline air quality testing in one of our neighborhoods in Lewisville near what will be the Ingram drill site.  The purpose of testing before the drilling begins is so that we can gain an understanding of what our air quality is currently like, so that we can tell whether gas drilling affects it later.  It's our goal to provide the neighborhoods with some reassurance that the air quality is not going to go bad without us finding out very quickly and taking action.  The drillers know we're doing this, and we hope that gives them incentive to do things in the cleanest, safest manner possible.  (We post the results on CPANA.org, and a fresh set will be there shortly)

We've recently had two developments that affect our CPANA neighborhoods:  Titan has filed for a permit for the B&H well site, which is near S.H. 121 and Southwest Parkway.  Williams has been approved for 16 wells and a wastewater collection facility South of F.M. 3040.  Predominant wind patterns here are from the South, so if there is any pollution from those wells, we would want to be able to detect it, and be able to distinguish it from any that would come from the Titan wells in our neighborhoods.

So, tonight, our CPANA board unanimously approved extending our testing in order to cover these areas.  If you own property that abuts F.M. 3040 or near the B&H site on Southwest Parkway, we'd like to hear from you if you would allow us to put a testing box on your property.

Further, following the lead of neighboring Flower Mound, which is dealing with some air quality issues in some neighborhoods, we are going to begin doing some testing for sulfur compounds just to be on the safe side.

In all of this, we're trying to use the most cost-effective methods of testing that would reasonably give us useful data.  So far we have only spent about $500 for testing out of $1,000 authorized this summer, and we have authorized about $2,000 more, which we hope to be able to pay for with interest earnings from the community fund.  

Lastly, we are considering adding new board members to CPANA to bring our number back up, since we currently only have 6.  If any of our members are interested in joining the CPANA board, let us hear from you.  In fact, we want to hear from you about whatever concerns you may have over the gas drilling, one way or the other.

On behalf of the CPANA board,

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