Orange meets a trio of vlogging potatoes…the YouTubers! iiPHONE & iPOD GAME: aSbit.ly iPAD GAME: bit.ly TSHIRTS: aSbit.ly TWITTER: aStwitter.com FACEBOOK: aSfacebook.com FACEBOOK APP: aSapps.facebook.com DAILYBOOTH: aSdailybooth.com WATCH MY EPISODES! aSwww.youtube.com CREATED BY DANEBOE: youtube.com

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COTULLA, Texas – Bill Cotulla’s hand rests on the handle of his great-grandfather’s cane, his gravelly voice recounting the changes in the small town his ancestor founded and named for himself some 130 years ago. Almost overnight, it has transformed from a South Texas backwater to the hub of a major oil boom. “You can’t be choosy,” the 75-year-old muses, considering the expanse of new RV parks, hotels and restaurants. “The oil companies that are putting up buildings are keeping nice yards.” For generations, Cotulla has been a town where even the paved roads had the aura of the dusty, saloon-lined paths from old Western movies. Cowboys, ranchers and shop owners tied their livelihood to the hunting season. Young people left to escape double-digit unemployment and poverty rates. Now, the challenge is all the people pouring in. Cotulla, about 90 miles south of San Antonio, and nearby towns are rushing to house hundreds of workers and approve plans for apartment complexes and industrial parks to keep up with the development of the Eagle Ford shale formation, one of the most plentiful new oil fields in the country. After several years of preliminary work, the project is fully under way and sales tax revenues are soaring. Municipalities are paving roads, laying water lines and creating parks while trying to avoid being overextended when the boom tapers off. “There’s still more people coming,” said Jerry Cox, owner of JJ’s Country Store, a restaurant and convenience store on the main highway that runs through the town. “It’s like Davy Crockett at the Alamo. You gotta think, are they ever going to stop coming?” he added, referring to the onslaught of Mexican soldiers who overwhelmed the fort. The economic transformation is the result of a new drilling method, hydraulic fracturing, combined with horizontal drilling, that allows companies to extract oil and gas from impermeable layers of shale. Major industry players have joined the Eagle Ford project, including Anadarko, Range Resources and Shell. Chesapeake Energy of Oklahoma City signed a multi-billion dollar deal with the Chinese state-owned oil company to raise cash to drill in the shale. No solid estimate of likely production has been made, but the American Petroleum Institute said the field should yield billions of barrels of oil. The project already supports 12,600 fulltime jobs, and by 2020 could account for $11.6 billion and nearly 68,000 jobs in a 24-county area, according to study in February by the University of Texas’ Center for Community and Business Research. Initially, some residents were skeptical about the windfall. In this barren land of mesquite trees, cactus bushes, rattlesnakes, feral hogs, coyotes and bobcats, oil booms_ the real ones_ always happened elsewhere. But the fat bonus checks and royalties rolling in to mineral rights’ owners have changed attitudes. Cox renovated the kitchen in his restaurant and put down new flooring. He desperately wants to hire at least six people. A friend who began building a Best Western on the Cotulla highway had all the rooms booked before construction was complete. People are driving around town in new cars. Larry Dovalina, interim city administrator of Cotulla, home to barely 3,500 people, said new requests for water and sewer services are coming in daily. The power system is overburdened. Sales tax revenue rose from $445,000 in 2009 to more than $600,000 last year. Some residents, like Mariane Hall, manager of the Cotulla Chamber of Commerce, are worried about possible side effects from the boom, especially ground water contamination. The development uses a technique known as fracking, which injects chemical-laced water into the shale to push out the minerals. Environmental groups and the Environmental Protection Agency have expressed concerns about the method. But the industry insists it is safe, and residents generally say they’ll rely on federal and state agencies to enforce environmental regulations and provide oversight. Similar booms have happened in other shale regions — most notably Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. In the places with mostly natural gas, however, production is slowing as the price of natural gas drops. In South Texas, oil courses through the Eagle Ford’s geologic layers — just as the price per barrel lingers at or above $100. The area, home to barely a half-million people in some three dozen counties, has been one of the nation’s poorest. Several counties have poverty rates over 30 percent — three times the national average. “We’ve gone through a long dry spell,” said Jill Martin, owner of Ben’s Western Wear shop in downtown Cotulla. At times, Martin thought she might have to close. The store relied on online sales and the hunting season, when hundreds descend on the area for its white-tailed deer. Now she knows she should stay open later and on weekends but can’t find enough employees. “It’s just been amazing from no activity to …,” Martin says, gesturing at the commotion in the small shop packed with cowboy boots and plaid shirts, along with the steel-toed boots and flame resistant clothing coveted by the oilfield workers. Sixteen miles north, Dilley, sits just off the shale. Yet plans for a 60- to 90-room hotel have been approved, city administrator Melissa Gonzalez said. Three RV parks are going up. Recently, a man offered to buy the town’s airport. Forty miles away in Carrizo Springs, 72-year-old Doris Jackson’s RV park has grown from 42 units to 125 in the past two years. The supermarket is packed and runs out of food. She has one well and is getting thousands of dollars in royalties every month. And she’s about to get a second well on her property. “What are we gonna do with all that money?” Jackson says shaking her head. “I’ll still buy my clothes in the second-hand shop like I’ve always done.” ___ Follow Plushnick-Masti on Twitter at http://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter , become a fan on Facebook

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Related Video E.Coli linked to restaurant. Sat, Jun 4 2011 1 / 10 German Health Minister Daniel Bahr wears a protective mask as he visits an isolation area of the University Hospital Eppendorf (UKE) in Hamburg June 5, 2011. Credit: Reuters/Fabian Bimmer By Hans-Edzard Busemann HAMBURG | Sun Jun 5, 2011 2:10pm EDT HAMBURG (Reuters) – German-grown beansprouts could be the source of the deadly E.coli outbreak that has killed 22 people, made more than 2,000 ill and struck fear into consumers across Europe, officials said Sunday. The Lower Saxony state agriculture minister, Gert Lindemann, said at a news conference investigators had traced the rare, highly toxic strain of the bacteria to a farm in the town of Bienenbuettel, 70 km (40 miles) south of Hamburg. Coming after three weeks of mysterious deaths and widespread consumer fears linked to the rare strain of E.coli, Lindemann said there appeared to be clear links between vegetables from the farm and food eaten by some victims. “We’ve got a really hot lead,” Lindemann said of the scare, which has strained relations in the European Union and led Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to say he would not “poison” Russians by lifting an embargo of EU fruit and vegetable imports. As well as beansprouts, Lindemann said alfalfa sprouts, mung bean sprouts, radish sprouts and arugula sprouts from the farm could be connected to the outbreak. Spanish farmers say lost sales have cost them 200 million euros a week, after a German official said Spanish cucumbers might have been the source. The crisis could put 70,000 people out of work in Spain, which already has the highest unemployment in the EU. Lindemann said the farm in Bienenbuettel had been shut down, its produce recalled and further test results were expected on Monday. He urged consumers in northern Germany to refrain from eating all types of beansprouts. Officials said, however, they were not sure if the farm was the only source. Lindemann said it was possible the contaminated produce had found its way into a variety of foods. “There was a very clear trail (to the farm) as the source of the infection,” Lindemann said. “It is the most convincing … source for the E.coli illnesses. This is for us the most plausible cause of the illness.” HOSPITALS STRUGGLING Authorities have for weeks been racing to track the source of the pathogen, which has infected people in 12 countries — all of whom had been traveling in northern Germany. Many of those infected have developed haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), a potentially deadly complication attacking the kidneys. The rare strain of E.coli has the ability to stick to intestinal walls where it pumps out toxins, sometimes causing severe bloody diarrhoea and kidney problems. Some patients have needed intensive care, including dialysis. German officials said the produce from the farm was delivered to restaurants and food operations in five northern states: Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hesse and Lower Saxony. Health facilities in Germany’s second city, Hamburg, are struggling to cope with the flood of E.coli victims, Health Minister Daniel Bahr said. Hospitals in the northern port of Hamburg, epicentre of the outbreak that began three weeks ago, have been moving out patients with less serious illnesses to handle the surge of people stricken by the rare strain of bacteria. “We’re facing a tense situation with patient care,” Bahr said. He added hospitals outside Hamburg could be used to make up for “insufficient capacity” in Germany’s second largest city. At a news conference with Bahr in Hamburg, state health minister Cornelia Pruefer-Storcks said local officials were scrambling to relieve a looming shortage of doctors. “We want to discuss with doctors about whether those who recently retired can be reactivated,” she said, adding that medical staff in Hamburg were battling exhaustion. Saturday officials identified a restaurant in the northern port of Luebeck as a possible place where the bug had been passed to humans, saying at least 17 people infected with E.coli had eaten there and one later died from complications. But the proprietor of the German meat-and-potatoes restaurant told Reuters his kitchen had tested negative for the deadly E.coli strain and none of his staff had fallen ill. (Additional reporting by Brian Rohan ; writing by Erik Kirschbaum and Eric Kelsey; editing by Andrew Roche )

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