Fracking endangers the globe – and children’s health in Texas

If we want to quickly combat climate change, we’ll need to deal with methane – “the other” greenhouse gas. Methane leaks are heating up the planet and harming people who live where gas drilling takes place.

And there’s another issue. 

Thanks to the United States’ natural gas fracking boom, millions of people now live in the shadow of oil and gas wells, unwitting participants in a massive experiment on their health. Methane, the main component of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas and causes health problems. 

It’s hard to find a place in the U.S. where as many people live close to dense drilling as in Tarrant County, Texas. There, the city of Arlington is home to 52 gas well sites and hundreds of wellheads. 

Our new investigation found that more than 30,000 Arlington children go to public school within half a mile of wells, and up to 7,600 infants and young children attend private day cares within that radius. Eighty-five percent of the public school students are children of color, and more than two-thirds live in poverty. In recent years, scores of scientific studies have linked proximity to drilling to increased health risks, including childhood asthma, childhood leukemia and birth defects. One study found a 59% increase in the odds of at least one asthma hospitalization among children who lived in Texas ZIP codes with fracking. Tarrant County has suffered high rates of childhood asthma, birth defects and other potential effects of drilling, but no government agency has ordered the kind of thorough public health assessment that could connect the dots.

Local activist Ranjana Bhandari leads the volunteer group Liveable Arlington, which tries to stop urban drilling. “You see it happening recklessly close to homes, schools and medical offices. You see no neighborhood input. You see really, really weak rules and no will or desire on the part of local government or the state to see that those rules are actually implemented,” Bhandari said. “This is ecocide.” 

President Joe Biden has declared his commitment to slashing greenhouse gas pollution by at least 50% by the end of the decade. But he has also said he will not ban fracking – and he has yet to lay out how he will square those two commitments. 

The Environmental Protection Agency, stuck figuring out how to manage fracking’s environmental fallout, begins listening sessions today as it prepares to draft new rules to control the inevitable methane leaks. Many people who are trying to carve out lives inside the drill zone – from Texas to California, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania and beyond – have signed up to speak, including Bhandari.

Listen to the podcast: Emission control

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UPDATE: Texas deputy who tased migrant child is placed on administrative leave

Just hours after we published an investigation including body camera footage showing a Texas sheriff’s deputy tasing an asylum-seeking 16-year-old, the story began having a significant impact. 

Reporters Aura Bogado and Laura C. Morel obtained the footage while looking into the pattern of federal migrant shelters turning children over to law enforcement. 

In the footage, Bexar County Sheriff’s Deputy Patrick Divers can be seen arriving at the Southwest Key Casa Blanca shelter in San Antonio. Staff there had called 911 after the boy, who had fled Honduras at age 15, refused to go to class and had broken some bed frames and storage bins. Divers tased the teenager for 35 seconds, even though the child did not appear to be resisting arrest or harming anyone. His partner, Deputy Harold Schneider, is then heard giving the kid a nickname: “El Stupido.” 

The Sheriff’s Office announced last week that Divers had been placed on administrative leave as it launched an internal affairs investigation. What’s more, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat who represents San Antonio, called for a federal inquiry into what happened. 

“Here you have a young man who’s experienced incredible trauma,” Castro told Bogado and Morel. “We’ve talked a lot in this country about over-policing in different situations, and this is clearly an example of over-policing with respect to asylum-seeking youth.” 

The story got picked up across the United States and around the world. CNN’s Jake Tapper, for example, dedicated an entire segment to it, and outlets from Peru to Brazil and Germany also covered the story. The Bexar County Sheriff's Office requested that we destroy the video before publication, arguing that it never should have released the video to the public because it involves a juvenile. 

We will not destroy the video. There is a strong public interest in its airing. The child’s grandmother told us that she wants the video to be published so the public knows what can happen in shelters for migrant children in the United States.

Read the full investigation: ‘I’m going to tase this kid’: Government shelters are turning refugee children over to police

This newsletter is written by Sarah Mirk. Have any feedback or ideas? Send them my way.