St. James’ Episcopal Church, Ave. A and N. 6th St., Alpine
Holy Eucharist 1st, 2nd, 3rd Sundays 11 am
Morning Prayer 4th and 5th Sundays 11 am
Godly Play for ages 3-9, every Sunday, Sept thru May, 10:00 am
The Big Bend Episcopal
Mission Welcomes You
Santa Inez Church, Terlingua Ghostown
The Rev. Kay Jennings
Holy Eucharist 1st Saturday 5 pm Sept.- May
432.386.7464
and 3rd Sunday at 4 pm
The Chapel of St. Mary & St. Joseph, Lajitas kayjenningspriest@gmail.com
bigbendepiscopalmission.org
Holy Eucharist on 3rd Sunday, 6:30 pm
A magical
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rustic lodging
camping
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Off the
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chinatihotsprings.net
Dan and Dianna Burbach,
Managers
continued from page 25
Christina’s World
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Local Artisans • Fossils
Large Day of the Dead Collection
“Beauty is Critical”
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26
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2017
heavy pumping in the aquifer
upstream caused the springs
to decline, and they stopped
flowing altogether in the early
1960s. From an estimated
1900 liters per second to noth-
ing at all, in a span of sixty
years.
When
I
think
of
Comanche Springs, I think of
Balmorhea. When Apache
Corp. announced it had dis-
covered what they estimate to
be 15 billion barrels of oil in
the immediate vicinity of
Balmorhea, the industry
rocked. It’s a part of the
Permian Basin that had never
seen much oil activity before.
The company announced its
intentions to frack on the
350,000 acres of land it had
acquired, though it promised,
gallantly, not to drill in the
state park itself.
Fracking, or hydraulic frac-
turing, is a process by which
fluid mixed with sand or syn-
thetic particles is injected into
the ground at high pressure,
fracturing the matrix of lime-
stone or shale in which fossil
fuels are trapped and allowing
them to flow more readily to
the well for extraction.
Developed in the 1940s, the
process is widely used today
throughout the U.S.
The hard thing about
fracking is that it takes a lot of
water to accomplish it. Water
is a scarcity in the
Chihuahuan Desert to begin
with, and no one really knows
how much there is under-
ground, as it tends to be com-
partmentalized (like our fossil
fuels) in separate cracks in the
limestone structure under-
foot. How it flows and how
much of it there is, is beyond
our technology to pin down.
Farm irrigation and regular
oil and gas extraction killed
Comanche springs; how
much pumping would it take
to kill San Solomon?
Groundwater contamina-
tion, air pollution and even
increased seismic activity are
all risks associated with frack-
ing, though the issue is hotly
debated and the facts are
never quite clear. The oil and
gas industry insists, naturally,
that the process is perfectly
safe and will not affect the
flow at Balmorhea. But when
I consider the intricate
processes that brings that
water gushing from the
ground; the hundreds of miles
of subsurface cracks, under-
ground caves, recharge
points, twists and turns; the
endless time (millennia, per-
haps) it takes a drop of rain to
make the journey to become
spring water; the geologic ages
necessary to produce the right
circumstances to produce an
oasis in the desert; when I
consider these delicate cours-
es, all of them being crushed
and pulverized in an instant to
release the flow of oil and gas,
I can’t really believe it’ll last. I
can’t really believe it will sur-
vive.
The first time I went to
Balmorhea, I was holding the
wall at the side of the pool,
idly treading water, when I
suddenly felt something brush
my leg. I kicked at it and saw
a bright cluster of little fish zip
away, scattering glints of sun-
light on their pale scales. They
were there to munch jovially
on my bare legs, and I soon
became accustomed to being
nibbled while I swam in one
of the world’s largest spring-
fed bathing pools. I wonder if
they will all be gone in my life-
time.