Our Houston truck accident injury lawyers have been focusing a lot of attention lately on the deteriorating roads and mounting number of deadly truck crashes in the South Texas region defined by the Eagle Ford Shale play. The region runs from Webb County near the Mexican border for hundreds of miles to the northeast, ending just south of San Antonio.
The once-sleepy area of South Texas that relied mostly on agriculture and cattle to get by now enjoys an economic boom from the oil and gas extraction that’s providing restaurants, RV parks, retail stores, and housing providers with massive new revenues. Some businesses can barely keep up. And local towns are finding new revenue opportunities in things as seemingly unlikely as selling “gray water” from their wastewater treatment plants to the oil and gas companies desperate for the water to sustain their profitable hydraulic fracking operations in the eagle ford Shale play.
Our Houston truck accident injury lawyers point out that hydraulic fracking, as its name implies, requires quite a bit of water. Hydraulic fracking became a viable technology for use on the shale play about 3 years ago. With the new technology, the Eagle Ford Shale play has become the hottest in the nation, producing up to several thousand barrels of oil per day at some wells, in addition to huge amounts of natural gas. (Source: John McCormack, San Antonio Express-News, 4/6/11)
The oil and gas extraction operation in the region has become a huge economic engine for Texas. Let’s take a quick look at some of the numbers:
On the down side, our Houston truck accident injury lawyers note that the Eagle Ford Shale region experiences constant heavy traffic both day and night over roads never designed to carry endless streams of heavy commercial traffic. Laden oil tankers, massive equipment trucks, and 18 wheelers “run wild” on local roads according to residents, and bring dangerous new safety hazards along with economic prosperity.
Counties are facing enormous costs because of road damage, and the revenue influx hasn’t yet caught up with the infrastructure repair and improvement price tag. Indeed, it may never quite catch up. Some of the oil companies apparently have been good about working with the affected counties to find funds to address bridge and road damage. Other companies have turned a blind eye to the problem.
Residents’ complaints about safety prompted officials in Karnes County to call in a Texas DPS police task force to help curb the problem of truck drivers ignoring signs, speed limits, traffic regulations, and safety. But even with an increased police presence, our Houston truck accident injury lawyers realize that the growing numbers of heavy commercial trucks crowding local roads will continue to result in large numbers of serious and fatal truck crashes.
Oil and gas companies are desperate to add more truck drivers to their payrolls in order to take full advantage of the economic opportunities the Eagle Ford Shale play presents. Read more in our Houston truck accident injury lawyers’ linked article about the South Texas need for additional truck drivers and how you might be affected by the large numbers of additional trucks likely to be added to regional roads over the coming year.