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Flower Mound's landslide election only the first step

Flower Mound voters delivered an unambiguous mandate to Town Hall on May 8 by deposing three-term Mayor Jody Smith and electing the “NFL” slate of candidates who campaigned on a platform demanding best practices from natural gas drillers operating in our town.

The election was a referendum on urban drilling, and the landslide results sent an emphatic message to the gas producers: The era of lax oversight and rubber-stamp permitting is over. Flower Mound’s SMARTGrowth Master Plan will once again guide the future of our town, rather than the drilling master plan of Oklahoma-based Williams Production and its ilk.

Indeed, a crucial battle was won earlier this month. But the war rages on. And make no mistake, we are engaged in a war with outside interests intent on plundering our resources as quickly and profitably as they possibly can – Flower Mound’s quality of life be damned.

Williams, Keystone, Titan, Cherokee Horn and other drillers have joined forces with a small, but resolute, group of mineral rights owners who have calculated that the prospect of huge windfall profits is worth the risk of contaminated air and water, an inevitable decline in property values and quality of life, and even the possibility of a disastrous drilling accident.

Their timing couldn’t be worse, and they know it.

The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico has cast a glaring spotlight on the catastrophic and fatal risks associated with oil and gas drilling. BP’s bumbling attempts to stop the relentless torrent of gushing crude – quickly becoming the worst environmental crisis in global history, this side of the Ice Age – is only the most obvious emergency.

The tragedy has revealed the cozy relationships between federal regulators – in this case, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) – and the oil and gas industry. We’ve read about improper gifts (including hunting and fishing trips) and the revolving door between MMS and the industry. We’ve even learned that an MMS safety inspector admitted to using crystal methamphetamine at work. (This is particularly alarming because one of the underlying worries associated with drilling near neighborhoods is the increase in crime and crystal meth use driven by itinerant workers pulling 12-hour shifts, as documented in Colorado and Wyoming).

For better or worse, we can take some solace in the knowledge that an epic catastrophe of BP proportions is unlikely to happen in Flower Mound, if only because the gas companies have so much experience in dealing with drill rig explosions, leaks, spills and similar accidents.

Williams is getting particularly adept at handling nasty spills. You know they spilled 3,000 gallons of toxic water at the Cummings site in Flower Mound in March. But that’s a drop in the barrel compared to the nearly one million gallons of coal-bed methane water spilled from their ruptured pipes over at least 16 incidents in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin since August.

A spokesman for the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality noted his concern and said “I'm certainly not seeing very many spills from other companies." He explained that ranch owner Billy Maycock’s land was condemned (are you paying attention, Flower Mound landowners?), enabling the company to drill throughout his property.

Williams spokesman Kelly Swan – hey, I know that guy! He’s at Town Hall all the time! – said "We take these matters seriously and will work with the agency to take appropriate corrective measures if necessary.”

If necessary?  Kelly, methinks it’s necessary. Apparently the $60,333 Williams has paid to settle just three of its violations in Wyoming since 2006 haven’t been much of a deterrent. (For those keeping score at home, Williams was fined $952,500 for a pipeline rupture and fire in Appomattox, Virginia, and just $2,000 for waiting eight hours to report the spill to authorities in Flower Mound.) The fines amount to little more than a rounding error for a company that lost $193 million in the first quarter of 2010.

By the way, the toxic water spilled in Wyoming flowed into a creek. I’ll bet Kelly predicted that would never happen.

Accidents are the inevitable byproduct of drilling, which is why it belongs nowhere near neighborhoods, schools, watersheds and other sensitive areas.

Just ask the good people of Caddo Parish, LA, where a well being drilled in the Haynesville Shale last month encountered a layer of natural gas much shallower than expected. Gas spewed into the air and contaminated a freshwater aquifer that supplies the local drinking water. 135 homes within a mile of the accident were evacuated, and 50 homeowners who lived within a half-mile of the site were not allowed to return for over a month! It seems the well site was unstable, it was leaking from the foundation and they couldn’t control the pressures.

I could go on, but I don’t have enough space here to recount the details of the many gas drilling accidents that have occurred recently in Pennsylvania, New York, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, Arkansas, Louisiana and yes, Texas. But I have written about them previously, if you’re interested in more facts the drillers don’t want you to know.

Which brings us back to recent developments in Flower Mound…

According to its web site, Titan Operating is “a private, independent oil and gas operator” that is “aggressively exploring the core areas of the Barnet [sic] Shale.” (I’m just saying…) The company, funded by a New York venture capital firm that characterizes its investment in Titan as “unrealized” (e.g., unprofitable), has drilled only a handful of wells in five Texas counties. Period.

Titan recently failed to persuade Flower Mound’s Oil & Gas Board of Appeals to grant four variances to the town’s ordinances that would pave the way for the first of 20 gas wells to be drilled on the Hilliard property along FM 2499. (You know, the same property that hosted the election billboards falsely claiming that mayoral candidate Melissa Northern wanted to turn 2499 into a toll road. The site is now lined with American flags, which have nothing to do with honoring Memorial Day and everything to do with convincing you that urban drilling is one of the inalienable rights our brave soldiers died to protect.)

Why Mr. Hilliard, whose family has lived in Flower Mound for more than 100 years, would allow an inexperienced operator like Titan to drill so close to his home, two (and soon, three) schools, a church, an ephemeral stream, an upland habitat and hundreds of other residences, is mystifying. Until you realize that he stands to earn tens (perhaps hundreds) of millions of dollars in lease payments in the process.

I must admit that with that much money at stake, I would have a hard time worrying about the outside possibility that a major drilling explosion, like the one last month in Caddo Parish, could trap hundreds of students at Bluebonnet Elementary and Shadow Ridge Middle School, which are well within a half-mile of the proposed well. I could tolerate the extra 1,000 or so tanker trucks merging into the heavy traffic along 2499.

I wonder if Mr. Hilliard has agreed to pay the hotel bills for his neighbors in the event of a lengthy evacuation? Chances are, Titan won’t be able to foot the bill, given its limited resources. Maybe Williams will pitch in, since they’re such good neighbors and all.

Before Titan’s variances were denied, Bobby Dollak of G&A Consultants – a bright, polished and indefatigable advocate for the gas companies who has logged more airtime at recent town meetings than the elected officials themselves – had this to say during his hour-plus presentation to the board: “There is no location within the Hilliard Tract that allows the gas well pad site without multiple variances. The location that is proposed involves the fewest variances and the variances with the least potential impacts on the Hilliard Tract and property in the vicinity."

Those words may come back to haunt Mr. Dollak when he returns to the board in July to present Plan B for the Hilliard site.

As for Williams, they aren’t acting very neighborly in Argyle, where they just bulldozed a seven-acre, heavily wooded site to make way for a condensate tank farm, wastewater pipelines and a natural gas compressor complex in an unincorporated residential neighborhood along Jeter Road. This soon-to-be-industrial operation is within 100 feet of three high-dollar homes. That’s not a typo – it’s within 100 fracking feet! It’s also in a FEMA flood plain and within a few feet of a creek that empties into Lake Grapevine. How patriotic!

And get this: The site will house between 12 and 30 tank batteries to accept tens of millions of gallons of permanently contaminated wastewater from wells being drilled on properties owned by Argyle council member Wayne Holt and former member Lemoine Wright. Enraged locals don’t understand how Holt and Wright could use their public office to negotiate an agreement that allows drilling on their land, while their toxic waste is trucked to their neighbors, along with the accompanying threats to health, safety and property values.

Can you guess who was there Monday morning trying to calm the protesters who temporarily blocked Williams’ demolition crews? Why Kelly Swan, of course! He’s one busy guy.

No wonder Williams just hired a new “Communications and Safety Outreach Representative,” Deborah Hempel-Medina, to spin the company’s message for the locals across the Barnett Shale. Kelly can only quell one PR disaster at a time.

At the recent Oil & Gas Board meeting, one lady predicted that “the State of Texas will make all our local (oil and gas) ordinances within the next five years null and void.” That’s quite an alarming – dare I say, fear-mongering – statement, intended to convince the board that strict adherence to our ordinances may backfire.

But the opposite scenario may prove more prescient: Texas could be forced by the feds to adopt stricter ordinances in line with those of its more vigilent municipalities. After all, the President just extended a six-month moratorium on new offshore drilling permits in response to the calamity in the Gulf. (Where was Bobby Dollak when BP needed him?)

Also this week, the EPA stripped the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) of its jurisdiction over a key air pollution permit in Corpus Christi due to the agency’s consistent disregard of federal law. More federal control seems likely to follow, in an effort to break the oil and gas industry’s stranglehold on the TCEQ and other state agencies.

And on Wednesday, WFAA-News 8 broke a shocking story that a senior TCEQ official covered up evidence of elevated levels of benzene in air tests conducted in Fort Worth. Deputy director John Sadlier had boldly proclaimed that TCEQ found no traces of cancer-causing benzene in December. But it turns out that half of the samples contained benzene above levels that, over the long term, are known to cause serious health problems such as leukemia.

The next time a drilling apologist, such as Kelly Swan, dismisses your concerns about toxic air emissions and implores you to trust the TCEQ’s studies, remind them of this scandalous cover-up and the federal probe that will inevitably follow.

Unfortunate timing indeed.

You can hear it in the raised voices of the drill-at-all-costs crowd at Town Hall, as they demand their “Constitutional rights” to tap their minerals (conveniently ignoring your rights to health, safety and “the pursuit of happiness”). You can sense the desperation in their profane and threatening blog posts, such as this one (adults only please), since removed, from Chris Tomlinson of the Shiloh Area Drilling Network following the denial of the Hilliard variances: “I hope I get the chance to meet them [Board members] on the street some time soon so that I can run them down with my car.”

(I would quote more of this rant from one of the most outspoken leaders of the pro-drilling movement, but this site would never allow it. Suffice it to say that it was so crude and incendiary that the local police, the FBI and the Texas Rangers were alerted, and Mr. Tomlinson will be watched like a hawk at future Town Hall meetings.)

No, Mr. Stewart, demanding that gas companies conform to our ordinances before drilling on our land isn’t tantamount to living in “the Soviet Union or Cuba.” No, Mr. Cope, refusing to drill in the middle of our neighborhoods will not lead Saudi Arabia to build more mosques “serving their Muslim population that preaches to ‘kill the infidel.’” But congratulations on avoiding the “misinformation” that so offends you.

It’s shocking the things some people will say when they know the truth is stacked against them.

During the election, Flower Mound voters mobilized in unprecedented numbers to demand accountability from their elected officials and the companies that seek to do business here. In the process, the town has become a beacon for others across Texas and around the nation to emulate.

We proved that ordinary citizens need not be intimidated by powerful, deep-pocketed forces that put profits ahead of the public’s health, safety and quality of life. We prevailed in electing strong, ethical, accountable leaders who have pledged to listen to all their constituents.

But the drillers and their supporters haven’t yet gotten the message that we will not compromise when it comes to demanding best practices and strict adherence to our “exemplary” ordinances.

The next front in our battle requires reinforcements. The core group of citizen-activists that has led the charge for the past several months – and longer – needs your support. Please visit www.flowermoundcares.com to learn how you can join the fight for the future of Flower Mound.

Because Flower Mound is worth fighting for.
 


Ladd Biro is a small business owner and syndicated sports columnist who has lived in Flower Mound since 2002.

Comments

  • Mark Yaeger 4 years ago

    Ladd,

    Great article and recap of recent events. I especially like your comments about the last O&G Board meeting and the "rants" from the pro-drilling crowd. What struck me about their comments was their sheer lack of coherent thoughts and arguments. The people who opposed the acceptance of the variances offered well thought out rationale for why the Town should not allow this pad to move forward. Clearly the Board agreed and the reaction from Chris T was disgusting!!! He then threatens public officials with bodily harm. And he calls his opposition radical?? I must be missing something. I guess our health and safety is not only in question from gas drilling, but from Chris as well.

  • Jana DeGrand 4 years ago

    Thank you for your well written article. If Williams had moved forward with their injection well on this site, toxic produced water would have been piped from Flower Mound to Jeter Road. The waste water pipeline has NO, yes, I said NO regulation, permit requirements, or inspections. The Texas Railroad Commission would respond if there were a spill or leak. This wonderful pipe would be a mere 36" below the surface. It has long been open season on those of us in unincorporated areas. Thank you to the Flower Mound residents who joined our protest Monday.

  • TRob 4 years ago

    Well said Ladd.

    I really appreciate you including links & background that substantiate your op-ed. Gives folks some excellent context on the issues affecting Flower Mound and other North Texas towns.