the Denton Stakeholder Drilling Advisory Group (DAG) has released their titled “Amendments to Denton’s Gas Drilling and Production Ordinance.” Read the letter that accompanied the report on the Denton Drilling blog.
I like the way DAG wants to protect the people in the ETJ rather than taking a NIMBY approach. Everyone deserves the same protection no matter where they live.
Now we need all hands on deck in Denton to let the City Council members know that you want an ordinance that will protect the citizens.
About Sharon Wilson
Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.
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The City of Denton could have cared less about my neighborhood, part of their ETJ. We made multiple presentations, pleas, e-mails, and phone calls. We had their “sympathy” and they felt “bad”, but no help for us. Quentin Hix, their former well inspector gave them the information they needed to help us. We even showed them that the proposed pad site and sludge pit fell within an environmentally protected area(a watershed) which feeds Lake Lewisville. we even have the signs up now , and surprise, surprise, our flood plain map was re-drawn. Our lives, health, and safety meant nothing to them. So guess what, I rarely shop in Denton, and will damn well fight them if they try to annex my neighborhood before I get out of Denton County and off the Barnett.
Didn’t one or two of the council members have a stake in that well?
As far as I know, not the site behind us. We had the Chris Watts well which is very close, but I don’t know if it is the same Chris Watts who was on the Denton city council at that time. I believe there are still lawsuits going on that one. The main players on the deceased Whitespot wells were a Denton personal injury, turned oil & gas, turned personal injury lawyer, an energy company land man with multiple aliases and a Tarrant County fraud lawsuit against him, and the mineral owners. The first operator was Reichmann Petroleum, formerly Richman Petroleum who filed bankruptcy when Quentin Hix had the lawsuit filed against them for multiple non-compliance issues in Denton’s ETJ. It was ultimately flipped to Carrizo Oil and Gas who set a record with The Texas Railroad Commission for the most ever amended applications, and even after all those, they still never got the map, acreage or mineral owners right. They didn’t even have enough acreage out of the unit to drill 1000′ from the well head to the north and couldn’t go to the south because of water tables, yet they included those lots in the pool that could never be developed.
Typical action of a local gubment. Kind of like in Booger County–all bought off–a bunch of BBO’s.
Impressive. I like the one about posting inspection results on the city’s website. Some of this is common sense…but we all know how that goes. Fighting for the obvious is the rule not the exception in gasland. Reading DAG’s document is a vivid reminder of how vulnerable we all are and will continue to be. This is hard work. Now we all have a new go by for improving our own city’s ordinances. Bravo to DAG.