FW CanDo!

Dr. Theo Colborn and Wilma Subra, two of the leading independent scientists working to shed light on the health impacts of gas drilling are sharing the stage in Fort Worth this Thursday evening. They will be discussing, among other things, the impacts of fracking chemicals and toxic air emissions on human health.

The event is sponsored by the Fort Worth League of Neighborhoods Association. Read more about Theo and Wilma at TXsharon's website.

Who:
Dr. Theo Colborn & Wilma Subra

When:
Thursday, August 5, 2010 @ 6:30 pm

Where:
FW Firefighters Hall
3855 Tulsa Way
FW, TX 76107
(This is in the FW Cultural District, a few blocks west of the Cowgirl Museum. One block south of Camp Bowie Blvd. and three blocks west of Montgomery St.)
Seating is limited.

In other news...

Today, August 4, is the fifth anniversary of the founding of FWCanDo. On this day in 2005, a small group of concerned neighbors met in my living room to discuss rumors that natural gas drilling was coming to our neighborhood.

A few weeks later a group of 25 pissed off citizens staged the first public protest rally against gas drilling in the Barnett Shale. You can read a report on that rally on page 1 of the Platts Gas Daily newsletter from 8/31/05. (see bottom of page)

A few months later, FWCanDo.org became the first website devoted to urban gas drilling. Shortly thereafter, FWCanDo produced the first video documentary on the topic, Dirty Ol' Town.

The primary founding purpose of FWCanDo was to help raise public awareness by gathering and distributing information about gas drilling. The secondary purpose was to network as widely as possible and help other groups around the city, state and country get organized.

In a nod to our guru, the late Edward Abbey, our motto was and is, "God bless Fort Worth, Texas. Help us save some of it."

We are proud to have been a thorn in the side of elected officials and drilling fanatics in north Texas for the past five years. It is very gratifying to see how public awareness has grown since our humble beginning in 2005.

Special thanks to Sharon Wilson for creating and maintaining the "Google of Gas Drilling" on her Drilling Reform for Texas website.

Platts Gas Daily
8/31/2005

Tensions flare as drillers target Fort Worth gas

A group of Fort Worth, Texas, residents has launched a protest against plans to drill for gas on church-owned land—a symptom of growing community tensions as producers fan out from the gas-rich Barnett Shale southward into residential areas.

On Sunday, about two dozen people picketed outside Sagamore Baptist Church to object to the awarding of a gas drilling lease on church property near a nature center and a neighborhood.

Don Young, a Fort Worth resident who organized the protest, complained about the church’s decision to lease to Fort Worth-based Four Sevens Operating Co. a 51-acre site south of Interstate Highway 30. Young said the land sits next to the city-owned Tandy Hills Nature Area and he fears that drilling could despoil the scenic 300-acre park.

Young, who formed the Friends of Tandy Hills Nature Area to lobby for the preservation of the parkland, said the nature area contains “one of the most unique ecosystems in the entire state of Texas.” Run by a division of the Fort Worth Parks Dept., it is an unspoiled remnant of the prairie that extends from the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex northward into the U.S. Midwest.

“They’re building too close to a piece of land that is irreplaceable,” Young said, adding that the park sits “in the middle of a huge metropolitan area that survived development by pure chance over the years.”

Young said he decided to picket the church after appeals to pastor Billy Taylor to cancel the lease agreement went unheeded. “I approached the pastor several months ago,” he said. “We decided we needed to make a public protest. We’re not some nut-case wackos.”

Young, who said the group would continue to protest the lease, said it’s unlikely that he or another member of the group would file a lawsuit to stop the project. “I have a firm belief that the state laws are the root of the problem,” he said.

Representatives of Sagamore Baptist Church did not return Gas Daily’s calls for comment by press time Tuesday.

Larry Brogdon, partner and exploration manager of Four Sevens, said he does not believe the site is inappropriate for gas production. “Any time you drill in an urban environment you’re going to have some people upset. But for the most part 95% of them aren’t—they want you to drill.”

Besides, Brogdon said his company has no immediate plans to develop the site and, in fact, “we haven’t applied for a permit.” However, he said the firm intends to eventually drill multiple wells from the same pads on the lease, which will directionally travel beneath homes in the area in exchange for royalty checks to the homeowners.

David Lunsford, gas drilling inspector for the city of Fort Worth, said that since the city passed an ordinance in 2001 regulating gas drilling inside its borders, more than 450 well permits have been issued and between 350 and 375 wells have been drilled.

Sarah Fullenwider, Fort Worth’s assistant city attorney, said conflicts between residents and production companies operators have become more frequent as “the drilling has been moving further south, getting into more populated areas.”

“They didn’t think the Barnett Shale would be this productive this far south,” Fullenwider said of producers that have been flocking to the region since it was opened to gas development in 1999. “When they first started drilling they thought it would be up in Denton County.”

Under city law, operators must obtain one of three types of drilling permits— high-impact, urban and rural—each of which has different notice requirements to nearby property owners. Gas wells must be located at least 300 feet away from homes, schools, churches, hospitals, public parks and public buildings, Fullenwider explained.

Generally speaking, city officials have been able to help broker solutions to conflicts that have arisen between residents and gas producers. “We have occasionally gotten complaints about lights and some other things that we talked to the operator about, and [they’ve] been willing to adjust it to make accommodations to homeowners,” she said. But lawsuits to stop drilling projects are virtually unheard of because “most people realize Texas state law favors the mineral owner.”

Martin Fleming, executive vice president of the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Assn., predicted that clashes between residents and gas producers would increase as “you have new activity in an area that has not historically been used to that activity.”

Texas generally has not experienced the types of organized opposition to drilling projects that are common to other regions such as the Rockies. “We haven’t seen very many citizen protests so far,” Fleming said.

But that is already changing. “Any time you have residential areas and industrial activity of any kind including oil and gas development, there’s going to be some friction over land use,” he said. “Particularly in the Barnett Shale, which has gotten to be such a prolific gas field, it’s coming into areas where people have not been accustomed to that.” JM