"In and around Texas’ vast oil and gas fields, the hydraulic fracturing boom is putting a strain on water supplies already reeling under one of the worst droughts in the state’s history."
"Jack Watts has been drilling water wells in the countryside around Fort Worth for decades.
And in the last five years he has seen something he says he’s never seen before. Customers around the natural gas fields atop the Barnett Shale are turning on their taps to find their wells have run dry, the victim of falling groundwater levels beneath their homes.
'Before, you just had the cities and the co-ops and ranchers watering their cattle, some dry-land farming,' Watts said. 'But with the shale play and all the water the drillers are using, you keep putting straws in these things, and we’re not getting rain, and you have a problem.'"
James Osborne reports for the Dallas Morning News August 28, 2013.
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