Today, in the second day of the meeting with over two hundred oil, gas and government people, I learned a new term. One of the oil and gas people, from Texas, obviously, kept talking about the problems her company has getting rid of their "norm" waste in our gas fields.

"Norm" pipe, "norm" bits, culverts, metals, what have you.

Fortunately, someone else was as ignorant as I, but brave enough to ask.

"N.O.R.M." = "Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material".

Oh. Okay. Metal that spends a lot of time embedded or drilling through radioactive ore beds picks up a layer of radioactive crust on the metal that cannot be washed or chemically removed.

Yeah, we got a lot of that. And naturally nobody wants you to throw your radioactive waste materials into their landfill. Much less to be recycled. I can see why her company has a problem.

The head of one of the county road and bridge departments was asked what his county was doing to control noxious weeds on their roads (an inherent problem in the gas fields, which is soon to become significantly more important).

His response?

"If you see any weeds on your side of the road, just let us know."

"We'll move them to the other side."

Yes, he was jesting, and we all knew it. (He started his presentation by warning the companies he was going to close the major artery through most of the fields for regrading. Probably "just for the month of August.") Took a while for the company reps to laugh.

Interesting to know that same dirt road (dirt, not yet gravel) is the second-most traveled road in the county. After only the Interstate.

Yeah, the gas boom is here full force. These meetings are occurring, however, because the boom is just getting started. The estimate presented today was another 12,000 wells in the next 5-10 (or maybe 20) years.

Based on the EIS limits, I would guess we've only got about 3-4,000 in the ground now, and look at the changes and problems we've got.

Ohhh, joy.

Katie, bar the door.

Later in his talk, that same road & bridge guy looked down at a woman seated at a front table, and announced to us all...

"I just got flashed!"

Yeah. She's the moderator. She flashed the card letting him know he had used up his time to speak.