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County to form task force on drilling

Group’s plan is to adopt best-practice guidelines to extract natural gas

Denton County commissioners agreed Tuesday to form a task force to address the concerns of residents affected by Barnett Shale drilling.

Members of the Argyle-Bartonville Community Alliance reached out Tuesday to the Commissioners Court as the alliance addresses health, air- and water-quality concerns in light of impending gas drilling and waste disposal plans for their neighborhoods.

In hopes of assuaging residents' fears and working with gas industry officials, the court decided on the task force idea to try to adopt best-practice guidelines for natural gas extraction throughout the county.

"We're asking for stronger regulations, better monitoring," alliance member Susan Knoll said.

One area of contention is an 8-acre centralized waste facility being installed on Jeter Road in Argyle by Williams Production Co. There is pipeline installed along with a couple of tanks that are not operational yet.

"That area is in the middle of a residential neighborhood; it is completely out of control," Knoll said. "There is stuff everywhere. It's a mess."

Williams announced in early February that while it had abandoned plans to sell part of its property at Frenchtown and Jeter roads south of Argyle to another company to run a disposal well for oil and gas production waste, it might use the site as a centralized location to collect wastewater from Argyle-area gas wells in aboveground tanks for disposal elsewhere - with transport by truck or pipeline.

The Tulsa, Okla.-based company did not abandon plans to build four natural gas compressors at the site. But a news release said officials were evaluating other locations for the "compressor and water-tank infrastructure" needed to support the company's Argyle-area gas wells.

The compressor and disposal well projects have faced heavy opposition from neighbors and some government officials who worried the projects could pollute air and groundwater.

Natural gas compressors have been linked to harmful emissions in areas such as the Denton County town of Dish, and disposal wells handle salt water that can contain toxic metals and radioactive substances.

Knoll also noted that 36 gas wells were approved to be located near area schools, and she mentioned statistics on increased truck traffic and potential hazards from it.

"It's very unethical," she said. "The [Argyle] Town Council and mineral owners … want to keep the profit and not the waste, and they are willing to take the profit at the expense of the citizens they are supposed to protect."

Knoll said her fellow group members want the county to help move industrialized waste operations back to individual well sites instead of a centralized location, as is apparently planned.

Commissioners resolved to put a task force together to address the issue, though Knoll said it may not be done fast enough.

"That is my concern," she said. "It will take too long to form a committee and, if they do form a committee, they will be working with the same people who are putting this toxic waste on us - the Town Council."

In response to Knoll's fears, Precinct 4 Commissioner Andy Eads said in an interview after the commissioners' meeting that the task force will be assembled within the next couple of weeks.

"I anticipate us coming back to court with some type of plan of whom to include," he said. "We want representatives from the cities in Denton County in the Barnett Shale to start out with specialists in the field, industry representatives and citizens."

Eads did not specify a number for the task force members but stressed that officials would want the number to be a manageable size to form a good working group.

The time is right, Eads said, for tackling concerns all parties have.

"Issues continue to evolve - from road issues to air quality to water issues," he said. "There's a lot of topics to include, so I anticipate in the summer working through all the issues to come up with some best practices we can look toward and adopt."

Eads said officials need to speak with the gas industry to understand the complexity of the operations, and with municipalities to figure out what standards they have and what has worked for them.

Commissioners were directed toward the Drill Right Texas best-practices documents from the Texas Oil & Gas Accountability Project, which Eads called a great framework.

"We need to dissect that and see what we can adopt off of that," he said.

While concerns remain, resident Jayme Sizelove said commissioners are off to a good start.

"Unfortunately, I have not seen the state-level agencies do anything to help us at this point," she said. "I think it's a very good start to some positive change, so I am excited about it."

Sizelove said she is concerned about the speed of county action on the task force.

"On my situation, it may not affect it much," she said.

Sizelove's land is adjacent to the Jeter Road site.

"I won't be the last one; in the future, these issues can be addressed and be dealt with in a way that protects the citizens of that area," she said.

BJ LEWIS can be reached at 940-566-6875. His e-mail address is blewis@dentonrc.com .

 

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