Twin Peaks : dateline -- Sweeny, TX

David Lynch: never been to the Sweeny oil refinery
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Had he not chosen the Pacific Northwest as the venue for Twin Peaks, the quirky and slightly spooky TV series of the early '90s, David Lynch could have chosen Sweeny, west o' the Brazos River, in Brazoria County.

Instead of the forest, the Conoco Phillips crude oil refinery could have served as the series backdrop. The refinery's stacks would always in the background, belching and snorting.

Oddball characters in town could have included the admitted former kleptomaniac who's running for the Sweeny hospital district board tomorrow. Instead of people in knit caps and flannel shirts, the characters would wear cowboy hats and hard hats and fire-resistant overalls.

The main road into town cuts right between the refinery and a chemical plant. The highway is so close to the combustible behemoths that the government wants to shut it down due to terrorists' bad intentions. The highway shutdown would further cut Sweeny's tenuous connection to civilization (ie., a mall) over in Lake Jackson, and to professional sporting events and the illicit ways of the big city in far away Houston, a veritable City of Oz compared to lil' ol' Sweeny.

And then, every once in a while, the oil refinery would have an emissions event. And the emissions events would occur more frequently as the series continued. People would routinely don breathing masks while they ordered their cup o' Joe and cherry pie at the local diner. The emissions events would be greeted routinely while the newcomer federal law enforcement agent, who was there to investigate a mysterious unsolved murder (as well as a spate of other recurring weird events), would take it all in with an appalled look on his face, before retiring to his motel room to talk into his tape recorder.
[emission report 57852]
[emissions report 57853]
[emissions report 57854]
[emissions report 57855]
[emissions report 57856]