Guinea Pigs of the Shale

There was a lot that went wrong leading up to the fracking of the Vintage/S. Bonnie wells. Homes were built too close to the pad sites, something the municipal ordinance still permits. No one in the neighborhood knew drilling was going to happen. The status of the city permits is in disarray. The standstill agreement handed EagleRidge the right to drill even though two of the wells may be illegal. The whole thing is steeped in deep legal ambiguity about vested rights. And now that it is happening, there is no monitoring…neighbors have had to pass the hat to buy a few summa canisters, as City Council has still (a year later!) not lifted a finger on their promise to implement an air and water quality monitoring program.

 

Clearly, we can do better. But how should decisions about fracking be made? The more I think about this, the more I believe these decisions should be guided by the basic principle of informed consent: Those most vulnerable to the potential harms should have the greatest say in decisions about where, whether, and how to frack. Let me explain my idea here.

With any proposed gas drilling and fracking project, there is sure to be some harm involved. But will it just be a temporary nuisance, a minor health problem, a major health problem, or even an explosion? Things are uncertain. How much risk is there and how much is acceptable?

There are more or less reasonable answers to these questions. But there is no right answer to them in the way there are right answers to math questions. There is no expert with the ‘one best solution.’ The right answer depends on what you value, your tolerance for risks, and how you are situated in relation to the costs and benefits. What counts as the right decision depends on your point of view. Thus, the question that matters most is not “what is the right decision?” but “who should make the decision?”  

 

 

Decisions about fracking are analogous to experiments on pharmaceuticals or other research trials involving human subjects. In both cases, the expected gains can only come about by subjecting people to potential harms. In the former case, it is those near the industrial sites. In the latter case, it is the research subjects who take the experimental drug.

There is a distinction in medicine between ‘therapy’ and ‘research.’ The term therapy typically applies to practices that are intended to promote the health and well-being of the patient. Research, by contrast, is an activity designed to test a hypothesis and contribute to generalizable knowledge. When you are a patient of a therapy, the goal is to benefit you. When you are a participant in a research trial (a 'guinea pig'), the goal is to use you to benefit others. Medical researchers have concluded that someone can only be used in this way if they first give their informed consent to the experiment.

Since fracking sites are experimental in an analogous way, then the same condition of informed consent should hold for anyone exposed to potential harms from fracking.

To me, this explains the importance of municipal governments in the politics of fracking.

 State regulatory agencies like the Texas Railroad Commission are mostly concerned about fostering and promoting the development of mineral resources. From the state’s perspective of running a massive and complex technological system, the informed consent of mere amateurs who happen to live in proximity to it is irrelevant. It won’t improve the functioning of the system any more than getting the consent of research subjects will improve the validity of a study’s conclusions. Indeed, in both cases the requirement of informed consent can throw a major wrench in the works. Some of the Nazi experiments (for example, those on hypothermia) were sound science but they involved such pain that they would never have been run if people had the choice to opt out of them. If we really respect autonomy, then some technoscientific projects just won’t happen. The danger of technocracy is that when the experts are in charge they elevate their values of functionality or validity above all other values. Then they make it look like they haven’t made a values decision at all—as if they were ‘neutral.’

Municipal government is a different kind of public sphere. It is oriented not toward system functionality but toward protection of goods like health, safety, beauty, and community integrity that might be sacrificed in the name of functionality. Local government is, in other words, the institutional home of informed consent. It is the voice of those living on the surface and made vulnerable to the harms caused by real-world experiments. This is why municipalities have become the most important flash point in the politics of fracking: they represent a different moral order, one that is rooted in place and community rather than the subterranean and network logic of commodity production.

I think this is why everyone, including many City Councilmembers, is frustrated at the limits imposed on municipal authority by the legal system. But what if we thought outside of that system for just a moment?

Imagine how things could have worked out so differently. EagleRidge wants to frack these three (or four?!) wells. The first thing they do is notify everyone within, say, a half mile radius of the proposed sites. These people form a temporary political entity, call it a deme, empowered with the authority to decide the fate of the proposal. They meet and deliberate about what (if any) conditions would need to be in place to allow the proposed fracking activity. They can adjust the location of the pad site, the distribution of royalty payments, the technical specifications required, etc.

Of course there are important details to work out (would it be majority rules?), but my point is to get us thinking about how fracking could be democratized.