Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Time for a Frack Free Denton

The Denton Drilling Awareness Group is launching a campaign – Frack Free Denton – to ban hydraulic fracturing in the city limits. This campaign is a ray of hope for our community. It promises not only to protect us from a uniquely invasive and toxic industry, but also to provide us with an occasion for a civic conversation about who we are and who we aspire to be. In the spirit of that conversation, let me briefly explain why I will be signing the petition.
 
When it comes to fracking, all of the most powerful players are focused on a narrow set of intended outcomes: profits, economic growth, and energy security. The oil and gas industry seeks to exploit minerals. The Texas Railroad Commission fosters and promotes this development. State and federal lawmakers are increasingly captured by corporate interests.
It is at the local level where most of the broader unintended harms from fracking occur, namely, air and water pollution, property devaluation and damage, and noises and other nuisances. Working within this context, the City of Denton has pursued what we might call the compatibility strategy: it has sought to make the production of minerals compatible with health, safety, welfare, community integrity, and surface property rights.
After years of effort, I have come to realize that the compatibility strategy is a failure. We can either have fracking or a safe, healthy, and vibrant city. We cannot have both. In calling for a ban on hydraulic fracturing, we are choosing our safety over their profits. We are choosing our community over their reckless pursuit of commodities. We are choosing the health of our children over a shortsighted, poisonous, and unsustainable fossil fuel addiction.
This is a choice I have made with a great deal of deliberation. Indeed, for five years the committed citizens of Denton tried to make the compatibility strategy a success. We tried despite a Task Force stacked with oil and gas industry representatives. We tried despite closed-door meetings and behind-the-scenes legalese. We tried even as our ideas for bolstering safety and health – ideas that had been implemented by other cities on the Barnett Shale – were repeatedly denied. And we tried even as we learned that the new rules that did actually pass – including the 1,200 foot setback distance – would not apply to the hundreds of gas well pad sites within City limits grandfathered under older regulations.
But we could no longer stomach the failures of this strategy when three gas wells were drilled, fracked, and flared in one of our neighborhoods – and we saw that this would be the ugly future of Denton under status quo policies. We could no longer simply work through the bureaucratic system – with all its hoops, loopholes, and systematic biases – when people were getting sick and parents had to keep their kids indoors in desperate attempts to protect them from the fumes. We could no longer ignore the fact that most of the people exposed to the harms were not informed and were not receiving any of the financial benefits. And we cannot watch our City grow over the coming years into the heart of the gas patch and let thousands of new Denton families suffer in this way.
As natural gas prices rise in the future, things will only get worse. Unless we act.  Enough is enough. It is time for a frack free Denton.

8 comments:

  1. This is really a sad day for the citizens of Denton. To come to the realization that they must force their municipal government to protect them is truly heartbreaking. If the ordinance fails it will be because the City of Denton truly does not want to protect it's citizens.

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  2. The citizens should never have been put in this situation, and, as well explained above, they did not have to be. I speculate that if the recommendations to protect the public had been followed, then we wouldn't be in this mess at all.

    If technology could have made this process safer, then it should have been used. It was not.

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  3. I hope everyone understands this will not prevent what is happening at Ryan, Rayzor, Vintage, Acme & Denton Municipal Airport wellsites. Only would apply to new wells, which no one is currently drilling!

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    1. That is for the courts to decide - the ordinance as written applies to any future hydraulic fracturing. So it is not intended to apply only to new wells.

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  4. My mistake! I could have sworn article in DRC said existing wells would not be subject to the proposed ordinance. That being said, I think that makes it more likely to be challenged in court & most council members seem to agree.

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    1. Ben, yeah there was some confusion on this front in early reporting. And, yes I agree with you there. Ultimately this mess will require some involvement from the courts. As always, I appreciate your critical voice - prodding us all to think about this from different angles.

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  5. Let's call it Corporate Terrorism. That could help the general public understand what we're up against.

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  6. 2 friends just bought houses in Vintage neighborhood. Either the word is still not out or they chose to accept the risk of living next to gas wells. Wonder if their sales agreements could be used as proof in the pending lawsuit? I didn't ask if they paid more or less than DCAD thinks they are worth.

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