The money behind fracking ban opponents might as well come in one of these.

Today, the Denton Record Chronicle reports on the financing of those supporting and opposing the fracking ban on the ballot this fall. (Spoiler: we want you to vote FOR the ban)

The raw campaign finance reports are available if you want to pore over them yourself, but here’s the nut:

The group against the ban, Denton Taxpayers for a Strong Economy, has received $230,000 in donations. Of that, only $750 comes from Denton sources. The rest comes not from out-of-town residents, it comes from out-of-town fracking companies: $75,000 from XTO, $75,000 from Enervest, and $75,000 from Devon.

In other words, “Denton Taxpayers for a Strong Economy” isn’t from Denton at all. More properly named, it’s “out-of-town oil and gas corporations against a Denton fracking ban”.

On the other hand, our campaign finance reports show that $30,000 of our donations came from… Earthworks!?!?!? Say what?

First thing, Earthworks is part of the Frack Free Denton campaign, no doubt about it. Their logo has been our website from the get-go (see our website’s footer). And they’re part of it because we invited them. We invited them because that’s what Earthworks does: they help communities that are wrestling with the oil and gas industry. In Texas, besides Denton they’ve helped Southlake, Flower Mound, and Dish, among others.

And yes, it’s true, strictly speaking Earthworks cut the checks for yard signs, newspaper ads, and even this website.

But it’s untrue that the Frack Free Denton campaign is funded by Earthworks.

How so? Because more than 95% of the money Earthworks spent on Frack Free Denton originated in Denton. Dentonites gave the money to Earthworks to give to us.

Why would people choose to give to Earthworks rather than directly to the campaign? It could be that Earthworks has a 4-star rating by respected evaluators of non-profit organizations and is a Better Business Bureau accredited charity. But, it could also be that by donating through Earthworks instead of directly to Frack Free Denton, donors don’t have to share their name with anybody – including the oil and gas industry. They can protect their identity. And in case you’ve forgotten, the oil and gas industry has been very aggressive toward anyone working to limit its reach.

Oh, the irony!

The opposition to the ban describes their message as responsible. The root of the term is to respond or to be accountable. Yet it is precisely the industry’s failure to respond to our community’s concerns and their refusal to be held accountable to our rules that has brought us to this point.

They’ve really taken irony to new heights with their latest flyer and advertisement. Yes, they care so much about our local economy that they are going to sue us for millions. Of course, they know darn well there is no possible scenario where Denton loses millions (read on).

They act un-neighborly by ignoring our ordinance and fracking right next to our homes, schools, and parks. Then they threaten us with lawsuits…. And now they want to talk about responsibility?! Never has the word “responsible” been used so irresponsibly:

• They call for “responsible drilling,” when the ban only applies to fracking. The word ‘drilling’ is not even in the ballot language.

• They offer a false choice, as if we just need better regulations. What they don’t say is that we actually have responsible regulations in our 60-page ordinance (sub-chapter 22). But our rules do not apply, because everything you see on the map below is vested under older rules. Operators have already gone ahead with fracking 200 feet from homes despite our rules that require a 1,200 foot buffer. That is going to happen again and again. Our choice is either mass neighborhood industrialization or the ban. You pick the responsible option.

• They accuse the leaders of Frack Free Denton of being outsiders – even suggesting that we have “direct ties” to Russia. Of course, we are the ones who spent years at City Hall helping to write our rules that are now being systematically ignored by the industry. Meanwhile, the opposition won’t even send a local board member to debate us. And the only time they ever showed up at City Hall was to drop off a bogus, deceptive petition they paid an out-of-state company to run.

• They commission an economic report about the costs of the fracking ban from a company that uses a proprietary methodology and that has a track record of exaggeration. Then they parade these hyperbolic numbers around in deceptive mailers and advertizements. They even wrap themselves in the credibility of our Chamber of Commerce when no local businesses were asked their opinion on the matter. Then, to heap hyperbole atop itself, they even misquote their own report. When we point out that THEIR OWN NUMBERS show fracking is 0.2% of Denton’s economy and 4x LESS economically productive than other land uses, their response is a telling silence. Here is UNT Prof. Matt Fry dispelling the myth of the local fracking boom:

• They have the nerve to suggest that fracking next to our playgrounds, schools, and homes is somehow good for Denton’s children. They use a stock photo to try to dupe us into this unholy twist on ‘responsible.’ Fracking exposes our kids to toxins and reduces our tax revenues. Yeah, that’s the responsible choice.

• Having lost the economic argument, they now turn to threats of lawsuits. Their latest ad claims defending the ban in court will be a ‘waste’ of city tax dollars. Since when is standing up for our health and safety a waste? Is it a waste to protect our children and our homes? Responsible people know that some things are worth fighting for.

• That same ad claims the ban will cost ‘millions’ in lawsuits. This is baseless fear mongering. The Town of Dryden, NY successfully defended their fracking ban for $38,000. Three cities in Colorado with fracking bans collectively spent about $109,000. Notably, defending their bans cost half as much as writing ordinances to regulate fracking. So, the opposition is telling us to spend twice as much money on pointless rules that won’t apply to anything. Now, that seems like the real ‘waste’ here. Further, Denton’s City Attorney has said we have a “substantial resource” of available funds to defend the ban – indeed we have on hand easily 40x the resources it cost these other cities to defend their bans.

• They keep making confident assertions that the ban is an illegal takings. But the fact is that there is no case law in Texas for this. We will be in uncharted territory. Nonetheless, a very strong case has been made that the ban is perfectly legal and defensible in large part because it does not prohibit drilling and there are 18,000 conventional wells in our area that do not require fracking to produce gas. Even in the unlikely event the ban is overturned, the city won’t owe millions to anyone. The gas will still be in the ground – no one is taking it in the way someone takes property when they pave it over with a highway.

The opposition is running a classic “ELF” campaign – exaggeration, lies, and fear.

Too bad for them that Denton voters are too smart for that.

Please, think responsibly. Then Vote FOR the Ban.

Thanks to Lisa and Doug Henry opening up their home last night, we had a very successful fundraiser. The generosity of all their guests will allow us to accomplish our goal of running more ads.

This is how David beats Goliath. Thank you!

It is now one month until we #passtheban. What can you do to make that happen? Please consider donating online or by check to “pass the ban” at 1620 Victoria, Denton, TX, 76209.

But this is about more than money. Let’s see the creativity of little d unleashed. Can you make memes? Can you do creative performances? Can you write letters to the editor? Blog? Host a meet and greet in your home? Hand out flyers and doorhangers? Whatever you can do – let us know on our volunteer link.

Here is one concrete suggestion. The orders for yard signs have been so overwhelming that we have nearly run out. We are ordering some more. But in the meantime, why not make your own homemade sign? For creative inspiration, enjoy this song by local Denton artists.

Frack Free Denton would like to thank the residents of Robson Ranch for inviting us to participate in a very important forum last night. It was an honor to have the chance to speak to such well-informed citizens. Members of our group have long admired the civic spirit and volunteerism of the Robson community. It was a delight to be so warmly welcomed by such wonderful people.

We know you all are going to do your homework on this issue. We invite you to browse our website and check us out on Facebook. A good place to start might be our “ten reasons to ban fracking in Denton” tab and our “frequently asked questions.” To see how the fracking ban will strengthen Denton’s economy, please visit our post “grow strong and healthy,” where you can crunch the numbers for yourselves.

A lot was said about the science. It is indeed complex, but a growing body of peer-reviewed research is showing just how dangerous fracking is. You can find an independent database of peer-reviewed studies at “scientific studies.” You can also talk to any City Council member and they will tell you that not even the industry representatives they speak with want to live near fracking sites.

If you’d like to speak to members of our group, feel free to write to info@frackfreedenton.com. You can also call Denton Drilling Awareness Group President Cathy McMullen at (940) 600-4122 or fellow board member Adam Briggle at 940-536-8710.

It’s unfortunate that the other speaker did not know the name of the group opposing the ban. That makes it difficult for you to access their information and conduct a balanced inquiry into the issue. In the spirit of democracy, we’d like to point you to their website here so that you can measure their side against ours.

Thank you all again for the invitation!

Fracking only employs 0.2% of our workforce. And only 2% of the mineral wealth actually belongs to Denton families.

This gives the industry a bit of an image problem: they are not local, but they need to appear that way.

They had this problem for years during the rewrite of our ordinance. The only people who spoke in favor of fracking were paid and bussed in from Ft. Worth. At the epic July 15 public hearing, a small minority spoke against the ban. Most of them were out-of-towners. And you may have noticed at forums about the ban the opposition has yet to be represented by a local citizen. It’s always a hired gun hand picked by the industry.

The industry seems to be using their near-limitless financial resources to take a two-prong approach to this problem. First and most laughably, they’ve tried to flip the script and accuse Frack Free Denton of being run by Russians. Our Board is all local residents. Our volunteer army is all local.

Second, and most insidiously, they are trying to brand themselves local. We now know the oil-and-gas-friendly U.S. Chamber of Commerce flew to Denton to buy the Denton Chamber Board’s credibility to make it look like the Denton business community favors this industry. They tell lies about how great they are for Denton’s schools (while using a stock photo of kids from who knows where).

And now they are ILLEGALLY infringing on UNT’s trademark eagle — effectively stealing the local persona that they just don’t have.

Here’s the illegal meme.

Here is the response drafted by UNT’s legal team.

In a recent mailer, the industry stooped to a new low by claiming that fracking is good for Denton’s children.

Today, a report was released showing benzene emissions from a frack site in Denton right next to homes and a playground. Here’s the cover of the report.

Chronic exposure to carcinogens is supposed to be good for kids?! What about the blowout hazards? The contamination of water? The smog-forming ozone emissions?

No, they say that all the money this makes for our schools is worth these health and safety costs.

The mailer notes that oil and gas contributed $1.26 billion to the Permanent School Fund last fiscal year. There are 304,000 active oil and gas wells in Texas. Clearly, oil wells will produce more revenue for this fund than natural gas wells – Denton doesn’t have oil wells. But let’s assume all wells produce the same returns. That would be $4,144 per well to this fund. That would mean Denton’s 281 gas wells contribute $1.16 million to the fund.

Now even after the ban, Denton’s gas wells will continue in production. Drilling, but not fracking, will still occur. It’s hard to say how that will all work out in the future. But let’s take an extreme scenario and assume that lost revenue from fracking after the ban will be equivalent to shutting down all of our wells. Again, that’s extreme and it won’t happen…but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt to help inflate their numbers.

So, assume we lose that $1.16 million contribution to the state fund annually. That fund pays out on its interest, which is about 10%. So, that’s $116,000. Now, that loss would be spread across the state’s 5 million school children. That amounts to an annual hit of 2 cents per student. The entire cost to DISD would be $540.

Ok, so on this mailer they are insinuating that toxic industrial sites near our homes and parks is worth 2 cents per student. For two cents, we should allow this uniquely toxic and secretive industry everywhere (when we regulate bakeries more stringently).

So that giant letter about the Permanent School Fund has nothing to do with the fracking ban.

If oil and gas is such a windfall for our schools, why does Texas rank 49^th in the country on per-student spending? If this boom is such a big deal, why has state funding DECREASED over the past two years by $1,000 per-student? And did you know that the two leaders of the opposition to the ban make more from mineral wealth than our entire school district? You can look that up here.

Could it be that this isn’t really about our schools or our children at all? Might it be that this is about highly concentrated profits for the very few and the very powerful?

Ok, so they can’t lean on the Permanent School Fund. But they’ll say the fracking ban will cost DISD lost tax revenue. The flyer throws around a $28.6 million figure over ten years. What it doesn’t say is that this is buried in Appendix D of an industry report and is NOT what that report concludes about lost tax revenue from the ban. On the first page of that report in bold and underlined in red it states lost tax revenues would be $4.6 million over ten years.

Ok, so even if we want to swallow that number (which is obviously an exaggeration ginned up by their proprietary economic formula) it’s $460,000 a year or $17 per student. The current operating budget of DISD is $208 million and will grow to $340 million in ten years. So, let’s take about $265 million as the mean budget over the next ten years. Their own estimated costs of the fracking ban, then, amount to 0.17% of DISD’s budget.

We can even be more generous to them and include potential lost royalties to DISD from the ban. Those royalties are currently about $140,000 per year. Of course, after the ban those wells on school property will continue to produce. Let’ assume they decline by half over ten years. That’s a $70,000 loss. That’s 0.02% of the budget or $2.60 per student.

So, they want us to sell the health and safety of our children for about $20. We spend about $7,700 dollars per student. Wow, their contribution is so overwhelming.

But that’s not the full picture. You see, after we pass the ban, we can build homes rather than frack sites. Every acre devoted to homes rather than frack sites generates 4x the tax revenue for our schools.

On the down side, that means we are actually losing money for our schools as we allow our children to be exposed to toxins and hazards.

On the up side, it means that a frack free future will bring healthier children AND more money for our schools.

Vote FOR our Children. Vote FOR the Ban.

We hope you enjoy this new song, “Fracking Is A Town’s Best Friend” by Denton’s own group, The Frackettes.

Denton residents believe in the ban! In addition to preforming songs and puppet shows, Dentonites are making their own Frack Free Denton signs. We love seeing homemade signs like this.

Our own signs are in and are starting to sprout up in front of Denton homes. This link tell you how to get one.

The fracking ban will bring greater health, safety, AND prosperity.

If you are a Denton taxpayer for a strong economy…if you want our schools to thrive…if you want our economy to grow…then vote FOR the ban!

We owe it all to an industry report

The natural gas industry has actually made the economic case against fracking. When they wrote a report about the fracking ban in the City of Denton, they wanted to show that it would be costly. But their own numbers betrayed them. They show two things:

1. Fracking is a miniscule part of Denton’s economy.
2. Fracking is economically far less productive than other land uses.

Fracking is a puny economic activity

The industry’s own figures show that fracking comprises just 0.2% of Denton’s economic activity (gross product), 0.5% of tax revenues, 0.25% of the workforce, and 0.17% of DISD’s budget. What they don’t show you is that Denton families get only 2% of the mineral wealth yet bear the costs for 100% of the pollution.

It’s no wonder that City Council member Kevin Roden wrote that the ban will have no perceivable negative impact on our local economy.

Fracking is an economically weak activity

It’s not just that fracking is small potatoes in the scheme of Denton’s economy. The industry’s own numbers are even more damning for them. They actually show that fracking is a very economically under-productive use of our land. Every acre devoted to fracking extracts an opportunity cost that means less money for our economy. Fracking means more pollution and less tax revenue for our roads and schools. By avoiding these opportunity costs, the fracking ban will bring significant measurable economic benefits.

Quantifying the benefits of the ban

The average acre of land in Denton generates over 2x as much economic activity as an acre of fracking. The average acre of homes in Denton generates over 4x as much tax revenue as an acre of fracking. There are some simple steps to compare the value of fracking to other land uses.

• First, estimate fracking revenues per acre.
  • We’ll assume an average frack site of just 1 acre plus only a 200 foot buffer around each site for a total footprint of 3.8 acres per site.
  • From this city map, we can conservatively estimate there are130 frack sites in the city (that house 281 gas wells).
  • That makes a total of 494 acres of frack sites in Denton.
  • The industry report estimates annual gross product from fracking of $25 million.
  • That’s about $51,000/acre in gross product (economic activity).
  • The industry report estimates annual tax revenues from fracking of $510,000.
  • That’s about $1,000/acre in tax revenues.
• Second, estimate other land use revenues per acre. For this, we can use the city’s new draft Comprehensive Plan.
  • Extrapolating from Texas’ gross product of $1.4 trillion, we can estimate the City of Denton’s gross product at $6.4 billion.
  • There are 60,899 acres in Denton, yielding $105,000/acre in gross product for the average acre of land.
  • To estimate tax revenues from homes, we assume an average of four $155,000 homes (the median price in Denton) on an acre.
  • At the city tax rate of 69cents/$100 valuation, that yields about $4,300/acre in tax revenues from residential development.
  • Do the same calculation with the average list price of homes now (about $210,000) and tax revenues go up to about $5,800/acre.
  • For commercial development it’s $9,600/acre.

And that’s being really generous

At every turn in this analysis, we make generous assumptions that give the industry the benefit of the doubt. We take their own numbers for granted, even though they used a proprietary methodology heavy on economic multipliers that doubtlessly exaggerated the economic benefits of fracking. Indeed, another analysis by this same group exaggereted economic impacts by three orders of magnitude. Hmmmm…they use proprietary chemicals and proprietary economic formulas…maybe they want to hide something from us? We don’t want to be secretive like them, that’s why we lay out our simple math above.

We also assumed a low number of frack sites and a low size for the average frack site and buffer – all of which inflates their economic returns per acre. For example, we estimated just one acre for a frack site, even though the industry average is 1.5 to 3.5 acres. If we take the still generous assumptions of 1.5 acres per site plus a 500 foot setback (our ordinance actually stipulates 1,200 feet), then fracking is actually 5x less economically productive than our estimates. That would mean homes generate 20x the tax revenues for schools and roads.

We only compared fracking to an average acre of land use in terms of gross product, even though 50% of our land area is devoted to the relatively lower yielding uses of agriculture and ‘undeveloped.’

We also left out the fact that homes appreciate in value over time, while frack sites depreciate in value. Indeed, in the long run, fracking saddles Denton with land that is forever blighted and devalued.

The Comprehensive Plan points out the many costs of fracking not factored into our analysis (see pp. 46-48): “future development…may incur unforeseen expenses…;” “Structures cannot be built over a plugged well…;” “future development potential is severely limited…;” “localized adverse effects which could make new development near [fracking sites] undesirable and unlikely…;” “compromise land use efficiency…;” “development of adjacent properties for residential and other protected uses is restricted…”

We also didn’t take into account the fact that fracking decreases nearby residential property values. And we didn’t factor in harder to quantify values that are nonetheless essential. For example, consider the economic benefits of cleaner air and water. Thousands of families won’t have to worry about chemical trespass near their homes – parents feeling safe in their homes: what’s that worth? Finally, Denton needs to attract a skilled workforce that can generate higher-paying jobs to propel our economy forward….are people going to want to live and work in a city with hazardous industrial zones near their new homes, schools, and parks?

Vote FOR the Ban

We already knew that fracking industrializes our neighborhoods, wastes and pollutes our water, and fouls our air.

Now we know it’s undermining our economy too.

It’s a win-win. Vote FOR the Ban!

Frack Free Denton yard sign, on the hoof

The wait is over.

You can declare your support for Denton’s health (public and economic) with our spiffy new yard signs.

Our crack yard sign team will be posting them around town where folks have requested them.

Want one of your very own? Email us at dentondag [at] gmail [dot] com with “yard sign please” in the subject header. Then just type your address in the body of the email. We’ll bring you one – easy as that!

The signs are free to you, but they’re not free to make. Please consider donating $5 or so to help us defray costs.