Old-Time Bosque Residents Praise Commissioners' Court

The County Commissioners and the County Judge hunkered down
in a rain-darkened courtroom during a chilly Monday morning
deluge.

Doom and gloom prevailed.

First, they grudgingly approved the county's bills of about
$130,000 - including $20,000 in Hillcrest Hospital bills for
a hemophiliac jail inmate.

Then they approved a site for officials to start negotiating
acquisition of seven acres for the location of a new $10
million County Jail in an industrial park owned by the
Meridian Economic Development Corporation on Highway 174.

Suitably morose, somewhat miffed, the judge spoke up and
told the audience seated in the first floor courtroom of the
newly refurbished Victorian-era building, "It's called an
unfunded mandate. They hand us a fistful every session of
the Legislature. But they don't raise taxes. You'd be
proud of them. They let us do that up here, kind of leave
it to us...Hillcrest Hospital, can't even use our local
hospital."

They set the time and date to interview two financial
advisors to direct the sale of the certificates of
obligation to build the new jail and three at-risk
construction managers for Monday, February 22.

That's when a strange thing happened.

Two elderly people who live on rural ranch properties near
the Hill County line arose to praise the court for doing
battle for them - and winning.

As their story unfolded, a profile in courage emerged. It's
the tale of how the five men who represent the interests of
a rural Central Texas County went to Austin and took on the
forces of Big Oil - not once, but twice - and battled them
to a standstill.

While he dug through a banker's box of legal briefs and
documents regarding the case, Judge Cole Word recalled, "We
kind of opened Pandora's box...We're the only county in this
state to stand up to them - so far."

He spoke of the stunned attitude of the Railroad
Commissioners and the lawyers who represented an applicant,
IWOC, Inc., for a permit to drill and operate an injection
well for disposal of unwanted brine from oil and gas wells
in neighboring Hill and Johnson County.

"It just isn't done that way," he said, shrugging. "They
really raked me over the coals down there...

"Bunch of old cowboy truckers went ahead and drilled the
well first; then they applied for the permit."

Earlier, Mr. Gerald Burns recalled how in the drought of
1953, his mother and father were forced to sell all their
livestock and move to another location, leaving the family
ranch behind after their well ran dry.

It split up the family, he recalled. He remained behind on
the ranch of close relatives while his family moved away for
the duration of the drought. So he finished high school
away from his home and family.

Mrs. Myrle Bradshaw agreed with him about those dark days of
no water. A Bosque native of the same age, she also
recalled the dark days of the late forties and the drought
years of the fifties when people were forced to leave the
country behind, walking away from their dreams and their
homes because of a shortage of drinking water.

"If this water is contaminated," said Mr. Burns, "if you
don't have drinking water for your livestock, you don't have
anything...Our concern is the water issue and the wells that
are already there."

Investigations done by an Austin law firm he and his
neighbors hired to oppose the Proposal for Decision to the
Railroad Commission on what turned out to be an unbonded,
unapproved and ex-post-facto permit to approve a well that
had already been drilled showed that the operation would not
only have threatened the water supply, it would have
polluted it with waste salt water that came from oil and gas
wells in neighboring Hill, Somervelle and Johnson Counties.

"There is none in Bosque County," said Mr. Burns.

Mrs. Bradshaw said, "The well was poorly constructed and a
danger to us in many ways, but most of all to the aquifer."

That was when Judge Word spoke up and said, "We took an oath
to protect and defend the people of this county and we don't
take it lightly."

There have been problems with deadly benzene pollution in
other areas of the Trinity Aquifer that have been affected
by the current oil and gas boom.

He recalled the arrogant lambasting he took from attorneys
who represented WEC, Inc. and Guru SWD in the permit
application.

"Even the railroad commissioners were a little bit upset
with me," he recalled.

But they wound up declining to issue the permit because the
application failed to comply with regulations guaranteeing
the safety of water resources and was not in the interest of
the public.

"They didn't do bonding. They just didn't do anything
right," said Judge Word.

Earlier, during the regular session of Commissioners' Court,
he called on rural Bosque Countians to take it easy on the
road Commissioners and their staffs.

There have been steady rains for the past six weeks, some of
them as heavy as five and six inches at a time.

"Right now, they're just covered up with work and when they
do get a chance to do some good, they watch their work get
washed down the creek in an hour's time."

jim@downdirtyword.com