What does “responsible drilling” mean?
Surely it doesn’t mean the way the industry is behaving in Denton: Fracking less than 200 feet from homes. Ignoring our local rules. Poisoning our families.
After all, every industry representative that has ever come before Denton’s City Council has admitted they wouldn’t want to live next to a frack site. They have talked like they understand we have a real problem here. For years, they promised to help fix things. Of course, nothing came of it. It was just talk. That’s all it’s ever been. Buzz words. Doublespeak. Empty rhetoric.
A couple of days ago, they finally came out and said what they really mean. When asked in an interview with the Dallas Business Journal to define “responsible drilling,” the leader of Denton Tax Payers for a Strong Economy said that fracking companies “haven’t done anything wrong.”
Their blueprint for “responsible drilling” is just more of the same. They aren’t spending over $700,000 on this campaign so they can clean up their act. No. They are trying to buy our submission so that they can go right back to exploiting Denton.
The bright lights of frack site and noise of semi trucks in the middle of the night in Vintage neighborhood. Photo courtesy of Gena Felker and Britt Utsler.
Here’s their definition of responsible drilling: The act of systematically ducking commonsense regulations to frack next to homes and playgrounds, jeopardizing the health and safety of Denton families in order to maximize profits for outside corporations, outside mineral owners, and a handful of residents who make more from fracking than the entire school district.
They are trying to pass off profit maximization as the same as property rights. But of course, it doesn’t make sense to have a democratic society if some can use their property in a way that harms the property of others.
That would be a monarchy. And that’s precisely the way they are acting. As if they have the King’s X. Exempt from rules that apply to everyone else. Untouchable. The very opposite of being a responsible member of a community.
Nuisances, hazards, chemical trespass, threats to water resources – these are all encroaching on Denton families’ rights to freely enjoy our property…not to mention our rights to clean air and water. In the past year, Denton residents have lodged hundreds of complaints to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Here is a small sample:
- SORE THROAT, TROUBLE IN BREATHING, COUGHING AND HEADACHES DUE TO EMISSIONS FROM GAS WELL DRILLING SITE.
- SORE THROAT, FATIGUE, NAUSEA AND BAD HEADACHES DUE TO EMISSIONS FROM ALLEGED SOURCE.
- COMPLAINANT WAS WALKING IN NEIGHBORHOOD AND IS NOW EXPERIENCING BURNING LUNGS, SORE THROAT, COUGHING AND A DIFFICULT TIME CATCHING THEIR BREATH.
- OVERPOWERING CHEMICAL ODOR WHILE WALKING OUTSIDE FOR 10 MINUTES, EXPERIENCED A PIERCING HEADACHE AND NAUSEA, THROAT IRRITATION, AND EYE BURNING
Our neighbors are suffering. Your neighborhood could be next.
The industry’s un-neighborly ways have backed us into a corner. The ban is our last resort; it’s the only way to protect our health, safety, and property.
Our choice on November 4 is not between the fracking ban and anything a reasonable person might imagine by “responsible drilling.”
It is a choice between the ban and the continuation of a nightmare.
Sharon Spiess says:
Denton, TX is not the only place voting to ban fracking this coming Tuesday. At least one other place is as well. In southern California the industry has spent considerably more money to defeat a ban on fracking that is on the ballot there. The citizens living there want to prevent fracking before it starts.
If the industry cared about the people living near their wells and wanted to “be responsible,” in their drilling efforts, they could have spent far less money working with these communities rather than against them.
The industry’s actions (and pocketbooks) speak louder than their empty promises to “work with the City of Denton to come up with reasonable ordinances.” Our city and it’s citizens get very little money, worse quality of life and health, worse air and noise pollution, a weakened economy, and the loss of billions of gallons of clean drinking water. These are things that we cannot “afford” to lose, nor should we have to.
This “reality” has and continues to be repeated all over our country. Unfortunately, what’s happening in Denton is not unique as the industry tries to lead us to believe. It is happening everywhere that fracking is occurring. Just because you can’t smell, or see the leaking chemicals with the naked eye, it doesn’t mean they aren’t leaking from wells. FLIR videos from Denton and across this country have proven that.
Everyday more studies are released proving contamination of water, seismic activity from injection wells, loss of wildlife and livestock, long term contamination of soil near wells. The list of negative impacts to our environment, health, and quality of life far outweigh the benefits of fracking.
We as Denton citizens may not be able to prevent these things from happening everywhere in this country. However, we certainly have the power to do it here in our city this coming Tuesday.
#passtheban Vote FOR the proposition to BAN hydraulic fracturing within the city limits of Denton.
CP says:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked
Bill Owens says:
While I agree there should be tougher regulations when it comes to fracking in neighborhoods, most people don’t understand that the City of Denton is in the process of annexing 8800 acres that started in 2010 and will be complete early 2015 (part of the 5 year plan). Much of this land is in the western part of the city which runs east of Hwy 156 near Ponder and Krum. There are no schools, parks, churches or neighborhoods. To give you an example, it’s 4.2 miles to Mckenna Park and 5 miles to the administration building at UNT. Most is open farm land where the land owners have had this land in their family for generations and also own their minerals. East of this area is the Denton airport, zoned industrial, where there will be no housing developments, schools or parks. Again most of this area is large tracks of land that have been handed down generation after generation and is just now starting to be developed. There is no reason these areas should be under the no fracking umbrella of the city limits while the neighbors on the other side of the barbed wire fence in the county are free to develop their minerals.
What should happen is:
*All tank batteries in the city limits should have vapor recovery units installed. Paid for by the oil and gas company.
*Every well in the city limits should have an annual well casing inspection. Inspection company chosen by the city of Denton. Paid for by the oil and gas company.
*No well can be fracked or re-fracked without all the neighbors within 1000 ft signing off on it.
*No housing permits allowed near a gas well, either producing or non-producing.
If the ban passes, besides the costly legal battle(s) between Denton and the State of Texas, I see the landowners applying to be de-annexed out of the city limits. This would allow the city of Denton to avoid lawsuits from landowners and allow landowners to gain access to their property, similar to what happened in Prattville Alabama. http://www.municipalinsider.com/state-overrides-prattville-on-de-annexation.
Matt says:
Bill,
Those are some pretty good ideas. Unfortunately, gas companies have shown an arrogant and blatant disregard for existing regulations, including setbacks. What makes you think that gas companies would suddenly start following these new regulations you propose? In my opinion, the gas extraction companies have had plenty of opportunities to play nice, but have chosen to ignore regulations and bully the citizens. They don’t deserve any more chances. And we already have money set aside for legal battles that have proven not-so-costly in other municipalities, despite the dire threats from the corporate interests and their paid-for politicians.
As a society, we cannot continue sacrificing health and environment in pursuit of the almighty dollar. There are other energy generation methods just as good or better than natural gas, used by other countries. In America, we need to bury our arrogance and start realizing we can learn from the experiences of other countries. Nuclear comes to mind–just don’t build smack dab on top of a fault line. Nor on top of a fracking site, either…