Bonfire and Flowback?!

It looks like EagleRidge is flowing back the wells near Apogee. I have seen some recent video to suggest this and have heard two eyewitness reports. This is when all the chemicals come up out of the hole and when the methane gas starts to flow up - much of it can escape into the atmosphere.

Is this a good time to have a giant bonfire? Well, it is going to happen tonight at 8 p.m. And they set up just across the street from the gas wells...this is a picture of the bonfire from 2007. Click here to see the giant pile of wood they have set up to burn tonight.

Déjà vu: More planned madness at Vintage

You are looking at the plat for phase 4 of the Meadows at Hickory Creek development being built by DR Horton. That is the same neighborhood currently surrounded by two gas wells (what I often refer to as the Vintage/S. Bonnie neighborhood).

Yes, that's right. The plan is to build homes right up to the southern pad site and wrap them around it like a snug little blanket. It was approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission back in March as part of their consent agenda. In other words, it didn't even get discussed - just rubber-stamped. When an operator wants to rework this well (and maybe add another one to this site), the nightmare will happen all over again. It's just the next time it happens there will be homes even closer.

How could we just be rubber-stamping developments that bring homes 100 feet from pad sites just two months after we decided that a 1,200 foot setback was necessary for protecting health, safety, and peaceable enjoyment of property?

And we know that DR Horton will not tell home buyers about the gas well. It will just look like a nice fence around a patch of land. What's behind there...a water well, some equipment? Who knows? Even if someone figures out it's a gas well they'll be told not to worry, nothing has happened there for years. And then...well we know how this story goes. The oil and gas companies get their money. The developer gets its money. The residents get the pollution and the devalued property - because when they want to sell their homes once the rigs come in, there will be no hiding the industrial hazard next door.

If this is already fated to happen, can't we at least be sure that any future residents will be fully informed before they buy? I mean, the salespeople should be required to show potential buyers a video of this exact site during drilling and fracking (unless, of course, we can stop the fracking). They need to really see what they are getting themselves into.

A Plea for Help: Can we stop the fracking at Vintage?

I was copied on this letter sent to City Council Member Jim Engelbrecht from a resident in the Vintage/S. Bonnie area. He has graciously allowed me to post it here (in an anonymized form). Please help to spread his message. The least we can do is magnify the voices of our fellow Dentonites -- of these families and their children:

Dear Jim,

My wife, daughter, and I are residents in the DR Horton development (Meadows at Hickory Creek) off of Vintage. My wife is also seven months pregnant.

I understand that our mayor declared that we have no problem with our city ordinances concerning gas drilling, just a problem with enforcement. If this is so:

1) What enforcements will take place for both wells near our development, which are clearly closer than the "no closer than the 1200 ft." part of the ordinance?

2) If the 1200 ft. ordinance doesn't apply here due to loopholes regarding preexisting wells (for one reason), how is there not a problem with the ordinance? Furthermore, why even make an ordinance with a 1200 ft. distance restriction unless it IS a threat to the health, safety, and rights to quiet enjoyment of a resident's property??

Halloween was a joyous sight, as many young families moved to this area at Meadows a Hickory Creek. This area is LITTERED with children of all ages. The noise and air pollution are too close to the families here. You must have the courage to do whatever is necessary to get these wells away from the development. Although I am a fervent supporter of drilling for energy, I strongly support the use of a moratorium for drilling in the city of Denton until, at the least, the ordinances can be adjusted. From what I understand for the future growth of Denton, this will only continue to be a problem in the years to come.

If you haven't visited the area, you must. Would you take your family and live 250 ft. from the fracking wells here? If not, would you expect DR Horton to disclose that they built by gas wells that weren't protected by the ordinances? Because they didn't.

Beyond the simple legality of the issues in this situation is the issue of humanity. Are you prepared to answer to the hundreds of residents, children, and unborn babies who have been and will be affected by the pollution and the symptoms that have/will result from these wells? Will you, in good conscience, be able to sleep at night considering that all of this will happen under your watch?

Please, you must act. Protect the citizens of Denton. Vote for a moratorium, enforce the regulations, or tell the mayor that there IS a problem with the ordinances and fix them NOW. If not, come live at the otherwise wonderful community at Meadows at Hickory Creek and experience what we have experienced. We bet you will change your mind.

Respectfully,

X

Rig at Southlakes Park

Our ordinance reads: "No Drilling and Production Site may be located within twelve hundred (1,200) feet of any Protected Use."

And the definition of Protected Use is: "Any dwelling, church, public park, public library, hospital, pre-kindergarten, kindergarten or elementary, middle or high school, public pool, public transit center, senior center, public recreation center, hotel or motel."

So why is it that we see a drilling rig up and working now just 719 feet from Southlakes Park? In fact, it looks like in just the past couple of weeks EagleRidge has received permits from the Railroad Commission to drill two wells from two pad sites just 719 feet from the park (and it has another permit in the works for a third well - see below).

I was about to post this leaving that as an open question. But I think I know the answer: The pad sites are in an industrial zone (near Acme Brick). So, you have to look above all that talk about protected uses in the ordinance, because that only applies to certain zoning districts. In several zoning districts, including industrial, drilling occurs "by right," meaning basically that they don't have to follow the regulations laid out in the ordinance.

Here is a zoning map of that part of the city. The red oval is drawn around the area that is zoned industrial. The green oval is drawn around the Southlakes Park area.

Here is the text now in full from the ordinance:

"The drilling and production of gas within the corporate limits of the City shall be permitted by right within the Rural Residential (RD-5) or within any unzoned area of the City that is subject to the use regulations of the RD-5 District, Rural Commercial (RC), Neighborhood Residential 1 (NR-1), Neighborhood Residential 2 (NR-2), Regional Center Commercial Neighborhood (RCC-N), Regional Center Commercial Downtown (RCC-D), Employment Center Commercial (EC-C), Employment Center Industrial (EC-I), Industrial Center Employment (IC-E) and Industrial Center General (IC-G) Zoning Districts, except as provided in subsection B, and subject to compliance with the requirements of this Subchapter.

B.

The drilling and production of gas within the corporate limits of the City in all other zoning districts shall be permitted only by Specific Use Permit pursuant to Subchapter 35.6, or through approval of a Detailed Plan in a Planned Development (PD) district, or site-specific authorization in Master Planned Community (MPC) district. Notwithstanding the provisions of Subsection A., approval of a Specific Use Permit also shall be required for gas well drilling and production on any land located within the 100-year flood fringe or within one thousand, two hundred (1,200) feet of the flood pool elevation of Lake Ray Roberts or Lake Lewisville."

Looks like we just wrote an ordinance that does not always protect "Protected Uses." So, it is not an enforcement problem but an ordinance problem - if, that is, we really think gas wells should be 1,200 feet from public parks. If we really believe that, does it matter that it is on industrially zoned land? Shouldn't we still enforce a 1,200 foot setback? In this case, that would mean moving the rigs further to the west.

Here are two pics of the rig. The first one is taken from McMath Middle School -- I don't have a measurement on this, but the rig looked to me like it is less than 1,200 feet from their playground. The other one is from the path around Southlakes Park.

 

 

 

Here is a picture courtesy of Sharon Wilson's work on the RRC site. The green area is South Lakes Park and the pentagon shapes are the pad sites:

Here is another one I snapped. You can see it is nowhere close to 1,200 feet.

Here are the RRC records for the one well on the northern pad site.

Here are the records for the other wells on the southern pad site. This is clearly a BRAND NEW project. And our ordinance DOES APPLY to it. But if my reading is right, it doesn't matter, because it is in an industrial district. So, even though this brand new project is less than 1,200 feet from a public park, our ordinance does not apply. They can drill there "by right."

That's the question for us. If we think public parks deserve 1,200 feet of protection (as we seemed to indicate in the ordinance), why didn't we apply the separation standards to gas wells in industrial zones that border protected uses?

Seems like another oversight to me - an indication that we have an ordinance problem and not just an enforcement problem...

Where are Denton’s Priorities?

City Council, Staff, and the Planning and Zoning Commission held a joint meeting today to identify their planning and development priorities for the next three years. Despite the ongoing controversy over the Bonnie/Vintage neighborhoods – and despite the fact that EagleRidge has just put a new rig up right outside of Southlakes Park – gas well drilling did not make the list of priorities.

Here’s a look at the Southlake well sites.

The blue circles are the newly permitted (by the Railroad Commission) wells that EagleRidge will be putting in. Note there are four of them, distributed across three pad sites. It looks like two of them are old vertical wells that will be converted to horizontal wells. And it looks like two pad sites might be less than 1,200 feet from Southlakes Park (classified as a protected use). This would clearly be a violation of the ordinance for the new pad site, at least. Has anyone measured these distances?

Now look at the surrounding area on this map. Do you see all those red asterisk-like dots? Those are all gas wells. If the Vintage/S. Bonnie situation is a good indicator of the future of drilling around here, then all of those gas wells can be reworked and refracked. Moreover, all those pad sites can have new wells added to them. In just this little snapshot of the city, I count about 20 gas wells already. That number could easily be 40 or 60 once gas prices go up and another drilling boom comes and operators add wells to existing sites.

 

All that industrial activity spread throughout town, especially in areas where future growth is planned…and we don’t have gas drilling on our list of priorities?!

Amber Briggle, newly minted P&Z Commissioner, finally raised this issue at the end of the meeting. The response she got from the Mayor was that we don’t have a problem with our gas well ordinance; we just have an enforcement problem. So, why are they not enforcing the rules on the wells in the Vintage/S. Bonnie neighborhoods?

 

This is what has people in those neighborhoods so confused, frustrated, and angry. Kids started getting sick when the rigs showed up. Parents have been diagnosed with asthma. A young family there just brought home their newborn baby. There are at least two other expectant moms. Several families are looking to sell their homes.

 

And this isn’t a priority.

 

The Gas Well Inspection Division posted aerial photos of the gas wells and the neighborhood from 2001 to 2011. Here are a couple of those pics.

 

 

 

Note how the wells preceded development of the homes. DR Horton knew about the wells and opted to build close to them. But not a single home buyer was informed about the wells. We have the 1,200 foot setback to protect residents. If the people actually living near the hazard freely choose to reduce the setback, then that is one thing. But it is another thing entirely when a major land developer makes that choice for the residents without even telling them about that decision.

Under our current regulations, we don’t have any way to guarantee that future residents will be informed about gas wells near them. Here’s what we do have (quoting from our current ordinance): “a Protected Use or lot within a previously platted residential subdivision where one (1) or more lots have one (1) or more habitable structures may be located as close as two hundred fifty (250) feet of a pre-existing Drilling and Production Site.”

 

In other words, we are inviting this same situation to happen again and again. So, how is it that we don’t have a problem with the ordinance? How is fixing all this not a priority?

A Nightmare on Vintage Street

It’s Halloween and the people near S. Bonnie and Vintage are bracing for the arrival of Frackenstein. Now that the City of Denton has withdrawn their lawsuit against EagleRidge it is all but inevitable that we’ll see something our ordinance was supposed to eliminate: fracking in close proximity to homes.

According to the Denton Record Chronicle, “City Council member Dalton Gregory said that the city’s new rules, which took years to draft, weren’t accomplishing what the council hoped they would accomplish. ‘We need to take another stab at trying to rewrite our rules to improve our legal position,’ Gregory said.”

Our new rules (with the 1,200 foot setback distance) don’t apply to most of the fracking that will happen around here in the future, because existing gas wells are vested under older rules. As one City Council member told me recently, “We closed the barn door after all the cows had already left.”

Here's what he meant: Even if the City would have won their cease and desist order, they would not have saved the Vintage neighborhoods. They would have stopped fracking on the two new wells, but not the existing (old) wells. Even under the best case scenario that the City is able to get new wells on existing pad sites defined as new projects (and thus controlled by the latest local regulations), we would still be looking at over 200 gas wells in the City limits vested under older rules with shorter setback distances.

And it may be even worse than this. Our current ordinance still has a clause (see 35.22.5.A.1.d) that allows for homes and other “protected uses” to be built as close as 250 feet from pre-existing drilling and production sites. Here’s the theory behind this. Setbacks are designed to protect the surface owner. If surface owners want, voluntarily, to move close to gas wells, then that is their choice (in other words, this is different from a surface owner already in place having a gas well come close to them without their consent).

The problem is that the “surface owners” being protected here are the mega-developers like DR Horton and Robson. They are the ones making a choice to build close to gas wells. But homeowners, those who will actually live in the area, are not making that choice. We learned from Vintage that no one was told they were moving into an industrial zone. So, they don’t get the protection that setbacks are designed to provide, because they aren’t the “surface owners” who matter in the eyes of the current regulatory scheme.

City Council member Kevin Roden called the situation on Vintage “awful.” He went on to remark, “I urge all of us to temper our initial desire for quick justice in this instance with what is in the long-term interest of our community.” It sounds like there is no stopping the fracking that is coming down Bonnie Brae from UNT to Vintage.

The only reason for this is because it is considered the continuation of an existing project that was permitted in 2004. Back then, there were no surrounding homes and Denton City Council issued a Specific Use Permit (SUP) for these sites.

I have pasted a screen shot of some of that SUP below. The current activity clearly violates many of the conditions laid out here. This could mean a $2,000 daily fine for EagleRidge. The City could even revoke the SUP. I wonder if they are considering this...maybe it's not too late to stop Frackenstein from visiting this neighborhood.

 

City Withdraws Lawsuit Against EagleRidge

I have just heard from a City Councilmember that the City of Denton has withdrawn their lawsuit against EagleRidge. This means that there will be no court date next Wednesday (Oct. 30). REPEAT: Do not go to court on the 30th - the case will not be heard. I have been told that there are good reasons for this move and to stay tuned to upcoming developments - in particular, please note that there is a special called City Council meeting next week where this issue will be discussed. That meeting does not appear to be posted to their website yet. I am going to paste the non-suit here (their motion to withdraw the lawsuit). Apologies for formatting, my work computer is acting up on me: NO. 2013-30817-211 THE CITY OF DENTON, TEXAS, Plaintiff, vs. EAGLERIDGE ENERGY, LLC AND EAGLERIDGE OPERATING, LLC, Defendant § § § § § § § § IN THE DISTRICT COURT DENTON COUNTY, TEXAS 211 TH JUDICIAL DISTRICT NOTICE OF NON-SUIT WITHOUT PREJUDICE TO THE HONORABLE JUDGE OF SAID COURT: COMES NOW City of Denton ("City") and hereby gives notice to this Court and to all parties to this suit that Plaintiff is taking a non-suit without prejudice, pursuant to Texas Rules of Civil Procedure 162, of its entire case against Defendants effective immediately on the filing of this Notice. Defendants have made no affirmative claims against the City in this case at this time. NOTICE OF NON-SUIT WITHOUT PREJUDICE 07648-003/285223.doc Page