Recently I received a suggestion that the county should retain the properties taken for non-payment of taxes in order to receive gas well royalties.

 Quite apart from the question as to whether the county ought to be in the real estate business is one of whether the horizontal drilling for gas is too dangerous to be permitted. As I understand it, this drilling requires the use of possibly toxic chemicals and the gas companies are not required to tell us what these are. Until these companies tell us what the chemicals are I will suspect that gas drilling might cause us greater harm than any hoped for economic benefit.

 I also find it strange that the federal bureaucrats allow a process which requires the use of millions of gallons of water when they make our private golf courses report how much they use and demand that they use much smaller amounts.