Letters to Editor: Texas of the South

Don't turn Bay into Texas of the South

 

Patrick O'Sullivan's article TAGs Call a Bum Steer (Business January 17) illustrates the customary exaggeration of the petroleum industry when seeking investor funds, while exposing the scale of Tag Oil's dreams of wealth to be taken overseas from Hawke's Bay.

Hawke's Bay as the "Texas of the South" would be disastrous as the petroleum industry in Texas has created massive water and air pollution, from the Mexican Gulf coast to Fort Worth and even Dallas, with its documented thousands of wells, chemical dump sites, gas burn-offs and cumulative gas discharges to the atmosphere.

Swarms of previously unknown earthquakes, from Texas and Oklahoma to New York State now confirm what was found during the 1960s, around Denver, where millions of gallons of unwanted waste chemicals were pressurised into deep wells, the resulting earthquakes forcing authorities to discontinue such disposal.

How can this be? It seems that existing, natural faultlines become "lubricated" by the injected liquids.

Hawke's Bay exists upon a massive network of natural faultlines, resulting from our frequent tectonic plate-induced shakes.

It just adds up to quick profit grabs for petroleum companies who, after a few years of gas and oil extraction depart, ignoring the created public health and environmental problems that are left for the resident public to live with.

Do we need this in Hawke's Bay - no way!

David Appleton, Havelock North

Inspirational article

What an inspirational article : Cancer charity walk nears end of the road and congratulations to the three Bay Boys involved. I shall certainly be forwarding a donation.

It was great to find that potential recognised by their school, qualities such as application, innovative thinking, concern for others, is still burning brightly. I am sure, with their background in history, they are aware of how much in the Hawke's Bay tradition their venture is.

We have just celebrated the bicentenary of William Colenso's birth and what a walker he was with strolls, on scientific or evangelical business, around the central North Island, to the Bay of Plenty and on more than one occasion from Napier to Wellington.

The early runholders, like the Herberts, drove their stock up the same coastline these young men have just traversed.

They may even remember that their fellow alumnus, Dr Charles Fox, late of the Melanesian Mission, walked from school to his home north of Gisborne for his holidays - to save the steamer fare.

Well done you fellows, at last a story about positive role-models for the youth of this province.

Phillip Rankin, Napier