Drilling South of the Ozarks

When I wrote my post on Monday, I had more of a global picture of drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and off the beautiful shores of our coasts. From a college trip in 1983, I still remember riding horses on the beaches of Galveston and looking off into the horizon to see the "beauty" of the offshore oil platforms.
Anyway, just yesterday, the story broke that the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission voted to lease areas of state wildlife parks for natural gas drilling. The lease gives rights to over 11,000 acres of state protected lands. To add insult to injury for environmentalists, some lawmakers feel the money collected for this venture should not all go toward protecting the wildlife.
Somehow, I don't think that drilling for natural gas is exactly what they had in mind when they labeled Arkansas "The Natural State."
Read more here:
http://money.cnn.com:80/news/newsfeeds
/articles/apwire/854f36f7f7e44d3bce84036620fb0d6f.htm