BillHustonBlog: 'Bomb Truck' Crusade Grew Out Of Frack Fight

'Bomb Truck' Crusade Grew Out Of Frack Fight
Sentinel Stands Guard Against 'Bomb Trucks'
He Tracks 'Virtual Pipeline'

By PARKER FISH
DIMOCK, Pa.

When it comes to risks involved with natural gas trucking, he is considered by many to be the foremost local watchdog.

At every public meeting, at every crash scene, at every mention of the word "XNG," Bill Huston is there, providing a wealth of curated data to inform the public.

"I'm very lucky in that I guess I'm kind of known as the go-to guy right now," Huston said in an interview in his rural home in North-eastern Pennsylvania. surrounded by computer and camera equipment.

Every few minutes, a fracking truck would roar by.

Born and raised in southern New Jersey, family ties brought him to New York's Southern Tier.

"My father was from Waverly, NY, and my mother was from Sayre, Pennsylvania," he said.

Huston attended a two-year junior college in Dallas, and became a computer programmer after graduation. After living in several places across the country, Huston gravitated to the Binghamton area.

His intense interest in the "virtual pipeline" -- "bomb trucks," he calls them-- that sends 80 XNG trucks back and forth through Otsego County daily grew out of his opposition to fracking.

Fracking -- hydraulic fracturing to free natural gas from shale -- is underway in Northeast Pennsylvania, although it was banned in New York State.

"I didn't get into the fracking fight until 2010," said Huston, who calls himself the director of the Stop the Bomb Trucks Coalition. "I have a lot of talents, but the talent I was contributing was videography."

For six years, the man and his camera could be see at almost every town hall meeting where fracking was being discussed. He also interviewed several prominent figures in the local fight against natural gas drilling, including Cooperstown's Lou Allstadt and Otsego 2000 President Nicole Dillingham.

Then, in 2017, he had his first encounter with an Xpress Natural Gas truck.

"I was sitting behind this box truck, and I look up and see a HAZMAT symbol," said Huston. "I looked at that thing, and to me, I thought that was so odd to see a box truck with HAZMAT 1971." He Googled the code on the sign, and it cam back: "compressed natural gas."

From that moment on, Huston began researching the compressed natural gas trucks, gathering as much data on them as possible. He keeps an online log of all the information he collects in an online spreadsheet.

According to Huston, XNG mainly uses three different trailers, and he has a wealth of information about each one: Loaded weight, unloaded weight, carrying capacity, height, width, even potential energy of the gas in gigajoules (a measure in in the industry) for each trailer used by XNG, all laid out in an online spreadsheet for the public to observe.

For those interested, the url for the spreadsheet is tinyurl.com/type4trailers.

Huston seems to always have his hear to the ground in regards to natural gas. When an XNG truck rolled over in the Town of Hartwick last year, Huston was on scene within hours taking pictures of the accident. He credits an intricate web of insider informants who tip him off.

"I have some confidential sources that clue me in," he said, "Let's just say that I have some friends that work in the New York State first responder community, and I have a source that has tipped me off about two of these (incidents) now."

As a leader in the anti-natural-gas movement, Huston has faced scrutiny from opposing camps.

But one of his most controversial moves came when Huston began calling the compressed natural gas trucks "bomb trucks". Thankfully, no XNG rig has exploded yet, but he calculates that one trailer carries the explosive equivalent of 120 tons of TNT.

According to Huston, he has received a great deal of backlash from both sides for using the term "bomb truck" to describe the XNG trucks.

"The term 'bomb truck' is scientifically valid," said Huston. "So why don't people like the term? Because it's so shocking. So they block it out."

Huston is currently traveling around New York State, holding seminars to educate people about the potential dangers of the XNG trucks that he studies. Huston held an event at the Foothills Performing Arts Center on Wednesday, Sept. 5, with fellow researcher Craig Stevens.

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William Huston: WilliamAHuston@gmail.com
Binghamton NY