DRC/David Minton

Chris Rella, director of research and development for Picarro Inc., demonstrates how methane and hydrogen sulfide levels can be tested using a laser spectroscope mounted in a van while driving Wednesday in Dish.

DISH — An atmospheric researcher drove a specially equipped van through several Barnett Shale counties this week and found methane plumes near many natural gas facilities, with one plume in Flower Mound measuring 40 parts per million.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

The Range Resources drilling company flares its Rayzor Ranch natural gas well on Bonnie Brae Street in Denton on Thursday.

Bill Carter crested the hill at McKenna Park on Thursday morning, his pet sheltie in tow, and saw a towering flame rising from the Rayzor Ranch property. An energy company was flaring its natural gas well — burning the gas as one of the final stages in the drilling process. Carter’s daily walks are for his health, he said, but lately they don’t feel so healthy.

DRC/David Minrton

Roger Mathis, who lives in unincorporated Denton County near Argyle, shows Joan Wells of Argyle an aerial photograph of where a proposed disposal well site is in relation to his home, which is near another gas well, before a town hall meeting Thursday on the proposed disposal well.

LANTANA — More than 200 area residents packed a middle school gymnasium here Thursday night for a wide-ranging meeting on gas drilling operations. The gathering was called in light of public anger over plans to build natural gas compressors and a commercial disposal well inside a rural neighborhood near Argyle, and neighbors used an hour-long open house to discuss the plans with representatives of the companies behind them.

DRC/David Minton

A noise-reducing barrier wall surrounds the natural gas well site at Rayzor Ranch in Denton.

The first round of air and water sampling around the Rayzor Ranch gas well site is complete, but residents are still raising money for tests that would show whether the drilling has any measurable environmental effects. “The key is to see, as time goes on, what variation occurs — if there is a variation,” said Alisa Rich, president of Wolf Eagle Environmental, an environmental firm based in Flower Mound.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

A worker helps put up a sound barrier Monday at a gas well site at the Rayzor Ranch development in west Denton.

Construction is under way on a gas well site at Denton’s Rayzor Ranch development, after months of public debate and legal wrangling. Range Production Co. started work on the site last week after clearing a series of legal, political and regulatory hurdles.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

Work crews use equipment to survey the ground under South Lakes Park as part of an oil and gas company’s efforts to see whether the area is fit for drilling.

Crews testing the ground for potential gas drilling recently wrapped up work in and around Denton’s South Lakes Park, but city officials say no wells are planned at the park. The seismic testing — a spectacle of trucks, cables and other equipment — was for a potential gas well site on undeveloped land bordering the west side of Interstate 35E, said Mark Schumacher, president of Fort Worth-based oil and gas operator Titan Operating LLC, which ordered the testing.

DRC/Al Key

Wilma Subra, a Louisiana-based environmentalist and chemist, reads an analysis of her research on the health concerns of Dish residents at Monday’s Town Council meeting.

DISH — Dish resident Dawn Melton, who serves as the town’s volunteer librarian, told a crowd of mostly strangers that her headaches have gotten worse in the past couple of years. “My migraines have gone off the charts — and sent me to the hospital,” Melton announced at a Town Hall meeting on the area’s air quality. “The last one they told me I’d had a stroke and sent me to a neurologist.”

DRC/Gary Payne

Residents wait to speak about proposed gas drilling by Range Production Co. during a Denton City Council meeting Tuesday.

The Denton City Council on Tuesday again delayed a vote on a plan to allow gas drilling across the street from homes and a city park, in a move designed to push the gas company to negotiate a less-controversial site. The council voted 7-0 to table a special-use permit that would let Fort Worth-based Range Production Co. drill up to five gas wells inside Rayzor Ranch, a planned mixed-use development located on both sides of U.S. Highway 380 between Interstate 35 and Bonnie Brae Street.

DRC/Al Key

The sun sets through a layer of haze on FM2153 north of Denton July 24, which was an air pollution “orange” alert day.

After Beth Lutz returned to Denton from a California vacation, her eyes began itching and burning again. The constant irritation in her throat returned, too. “I don’t know what’s in the air here,” Lutz said. According to state and federal data, it’s ground-level ozone. And greenhouse gases. And other noxious elements. The American Lung Association grades Denton County air quality an “F.”