Back when I was about 20, I can remember sitting in Annie’s living room watching the No Nukes concert on cable. Her dad was watching it with us. Bob was a conservative sort, politically, a staunch Republican, a Reagan man — my polar opposite on nearly every issue. (He also was one of the smartest and most humane men I have ever met.)
As we were watching, however, he made a comment that stuck with me.
He opposed nuclear power, he said, because he wouldn’t want it in his back yard, and if he didn’t want it in his yard, then he didn’t think anyone should have to have it in their’s.
Simple. To the point. It cut through so much of the noise. If you don’t want a nuke plant — or a power plant or a 2 million-square-foot warehouse — in your backyard or near your house, you shouldn’t be so eager to advocate its construction in someone else’s yard or on their street. Enter Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobile:
Tillerson has joined a lawsuit that cites fracking’s consequences in order to block the construction of a 160-foot water tower next to his and his wife’s Texas home.
The Wall Street Journal reports the tower would supply water to a nearby fracking site, and the plaintiffs argue the project would cause too much noise and traffic from hauling the water from the tower to the drilling site. The water tower, owned by Cross Timbers Water Supply Corporation, “will sell water to oil and gas explorers for fracing [sic] shale formations leading to traffic with heavy trucks on FM 407, creating a noise nuisance and traffic hazards,” the suit says.
Though Tillerson’s name is on the lawsuit, a lawyer representing him said his concern is about the devaluation of his property, not fracking specifically.
Tillerson is less concerned for others who might live in areas where gas companies are drilling and has “lashed out at fracking critics and proponents of regulation,” adding that “the risks are very manageable.”
I think my late-father-in-law would have something to say to Mr. Tillerson
Send me an e-mail.
Hank Kalet 