Living in Suburban Mordor

 

A relatively small flare today. This relatively new site burns so bright some nights it lights up the whole south side of town and can be seen from my yard about a mile north.

If one drives around the city of Williston, there are almost always a few gas flares of dozens of stacks around town burning. They burn intermittently, but often and consistently enough that it seems like a big polluting waste. Some days, one can sit and enjoy a burger at Culver's while watching a raging flare just across the street. There is a large one on the south side of town near the fitness center that rages with a flame that lights up the night sky. On cloudy nights, I can sit in my backyard and watch the lights flicker off the clouds, reminiscent of scenes from Tolkien's Mordor. It is as if Sauron's tower is just a few blocks away. On other days, I can sit in my front yard and watch a flame burning a half mile across the Little Muddy River. The absurd waste is even more ridiculous when I pay the gas bill to heat my house while I can watch enough to heat my house and maybe half the town for a whole winter being casually burned off on all sides of my home.  

It is hard to tell whether all this burning around the community has any health implications. Even with the flares, the local air is much cleaner than the average urban city street, but who knows? In addition to what one can see, there is everything you can't see going on with hazardous chemicals and messed up water, which is an unregulated mess just waiting to spring itself on us in unknown toxic futures. My wonderful suburban Mordor where I live on the corner of Absurdistan and Crazytown.