GAS WELLS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD ....

.... only if you let it happen.

Mountain Creek Neighborhood Alliance residents have been attending the Dallas Gas Drilling Task Force's meetings at City Hall from July, 2011 to February, 2012.  All 22 meetings and 2 Public Hearings.  The Task Force has made their recommendations.  And we're not happy with them and you're not going to be happy with them either.

Here is a chart we made for you of the key areas we're not happy with and they MUST be changed.

Task Force Recommendations that Must be Strengthened:

ISSUE	TASK FORCE	SOLUTION
Too close for comfort	Separate and unequal protections: 1000 feet from homes, schools, hospitals and places of worship, but less for offices, shopping centers and restaurants—and gas companies can ask for a “variance” of just 500 feet for any of these!	Dallas should proceed with caution. The Army Corps of Engineers recommends a setback of 3000 feet for the protection of a dam. Dallas should use this as a guideline to uniformly protect its residents where we live, work, worship and play.
Secret toxic chemicals	Gas companies can keep the full list of toxic chemicals they use to frack permanently hidden, calling it their “trade secret.” Not even Dallas police, firefighters and medical professionals would be given this information.	Dallas’ first responders are on the front lines every day and will be put at high risk of exposure to these toxic chemicals. Dallas should demand full disclosure of all chemicals with no “trade secret” exemptions.
Water for drinking, not for fracking	Fracking uses 1-8 million gallons of water for each new gas well—and this water is permanently contaminated with toxic chemicals. Gas companies would be allowed to do this even during severe droughts, and even use drinking water from Dallas to drill in other cities.	Dallas should charge gas companies twice as much for using our water since it will be contaminated and lost forever, ban the exporting of our drinking water to other cities for the purpose of fracking and ban water for fracking as a part of Dallas’ Stage III drought restrictions.
Save our parklands & floodplains	Reverse the current gas drilling ordinance in order to allow fracking inside Dallas parklands and floodplains—as well as all compressor stations, storage tanks and other industrial equipment.	Allowing industrial development inside our parklands and floodplains is dangerous, risky and costly. Dallas should keep the existing prohibition on fracking inside parklands and floodplains, and protect these with 3000 foot setbacks.
Protect the  air we breathe	Allow fracking operations to continue contributing as much CO2 as all the cars on D/FW roads, which would all but eliminate the recently adopted Dallas climate action plan.	Dallas should require the gas industry to  use their own Best Practises so as to not add to the smog producing and poisonous gases in Dallas' air.
Effective oversight	Continue relying on failed state and federal efforts to police fracking operations in the D/FW Metroplex, and these outside agencies to handle problems when they arise.	Dallas should establish its own industry-funded office of gas drilling oversight. This office must have enough trained personnel, equipped with the latest technology, to be able to provide help to residents 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Mountain Creek Neighborhood Alliance Leaders  Stand Up by Attending:

Citywide Organizing Meeting on Gas Drilling in Dallas
Tuesday, March 27th
7 to 8:30 pm
Center for Community Cooperation
2900 Live Oak
Dallas, TX 75204

Email mcnadallas@yahoo.com with any questions.

Dallas Gas Drilling Task Force Makes Recommendations

CONFUSING   CONFUSING

After 8 months of studying ordinances from Ft Worth, Arlington, Grand Prairie, Flower Mound, and Hurst, the Dallas Gas Drilling Task Force has made its confusing and hard to understand recommendations.


The upshot is Dallas has a weaker proposed ordinance of protection for their citizens than most of the other cities they studied.


http://www.dallascityhall.com/pdf/GasDrilling/GasDrillingandProductionOrdinance_030112.pdf


Of major importance is the "setback" or distance required from a gas drilling and production use to a protected use is as follows:  1,000 ft minimum spacing measured from the property line of the operation/pad site to  ....


residential, institutional and community service uses *


.... but the City Council may grant a setback distance of not less than 500 ft for protected use with 2/3 vote in favor.


The distance for Habitable Structures (is any use that is not a protected use) is 300' from the property line of the operation/pad site. 


.... So our homes* could be between 500 ft to 1000 ft from a pad site 


.... and anything else can be 300 ft?


Got that?  You need to be a lobbyist to keep track of this!  


Their will be a:

Citywide Organizing Meeting on Gas Drilling in Dallas

Tuesday, March 27th  7 to 8:30 pm

Center for Comunity Cooperation

2900 Live Oak, Dallas

* See exceptions on link.

Dallas Citizens Gas Drilling Ordinance

Review the Citizens Recommendations in the link below:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/68818189/Citizens-Recommendations-for-a-Dallas-Gas-Well-Ordinance

Citizens Oppose Heavy Industry in Neighborhoods

Citizen Recommendations for a new Gas Drilling Ordinance

Citizens work hard to protect their neighborhoods ....    by Mayor Rawlings

The Dallas City Council was presented with recommendations for the creation of a new Dallas Gas Drilling Ordinance on October 4, 2011.  These recommendations have been compiled after months of research and study coordinated by the following citizen groups:

Mountain Creek Neighborhood Alliance
Dallas Area Residents for Responsible Drilling
Downwinders at Risk
Texas Campaign for the Environment

Other municipalities gas ordinances in the Barnet Shale were studied and used as a guide for the Dallas citizens proposal.

Recommendation highlights:

• A 3000 foot setback based upon public safety (danger to water mains, foundations, bridges, etc), as outlined in the national guidelines of the Corps of Engineers Manual with regards to the Joe Pool Lake Dam infrastructure. 

• Full disclosure of fracking fluid ingredients, with no exceptions,and with samples taken by the city.

• Off-sets for air pollutants of NOx, VOCx and Greenhouse Gases.

•  No wells allowed inside a residential area.  Wells to be restricted to areas zoned for heavy industry.

• Notice of a Gas Well SUP permit application shall be mailed to all residences, schools, churches, day care center, nursing homes and business within a one mile radius of the facility.  

See attached link for copy of Recommendations: 

 http://www.scribd.com/doc/67593580/Citizens-Recommendations-for-a-Dallas-Gas-Well-Ordinance

Mountain Creek Area Alert: Redistricting Changes

A Mountain Creek Area Neighborhood

 A message from Councilman Griggs,

Our Dallas City Council is taking up the important topic of redistricting.  Every ten years we redraw our council districts and this Saturday is your opportunity to tell the full Dallas City Council what you think:

Saturday, September 24, 2011

3pm - 6pm

Dallas City Hall

1500 Marilla Street

I hope to see you there.  This is one of the most important meetings you can attend.  Please see the maps that will be discussed at:

http://www.dallascityhall.com/Redistricting/planReview.html

Please join me in supporting the Jasso Griggs Amendments to Plan 16, which keep our Oak Cliff in TWO council districts and maintain the historic connection between Mountain Creek/The Woods and North Oak Cliff.  Other plans threaten to break Oak Cliff into FOUR council districts and divide our community west of I-35.  This is an important meeting!  And YOU will have a chance to be heard! 

Will Joe Pool Lake have a future? Mother Jones reports ....

As Texas Withers, Gas Industry Guzzles

Drought restrictions are forcing homeowners to quit watering their gardens, even as thirsty fracking operations help themselves to the agua.

By Josh Harkinson | Thu Sep. 1, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

---

At Trinity Park, a popular picnic spot near downtown Fort Worth, Texas, a scorching summer has killed stately oaks and turned lawns into brittle moonscapes. On the park's eastern edge, loud diesel generators pump some 4 million gallons of water from the Trinity River, though they're not supplying the park or city residents, who began facing drought-imposed watering restrictions on Monday. Instead, Chesapeake Energy is piping the water across the park to frack a nearby natural gas well.
As Texas faces its worst single-year drought ever, many drinking wells have failed, entire towns could go dry, and millions of residential water users face mandatory cutbacks. A study released at a meeting of Texas water districts yesterday predicted that the drought will persist through next summer. But so far, the state's booming and increasingly thirsty natural gas industry faces no limits to how much water it can pump.
"In a drought like this, every drop is important," says Don Young, a local anti-fracking activist who showed me where Chesapeake's water pipes had been hoisted over a jogging trail. "And if we're asked to conserve, then I think the drilling industry should be doing the same thing."

Fracking, which employs high-pressure jets of water to fracture rock and release natural gas, accounts for a fast-growing share of water use in some of the driest parts of Texas. Though the overall affect of fracking on reservoirs and rivers in Fort Worth's Barnett Shale zone is dwarfed by agriculture and homeowners, its local impacts can be severe. For example, in the Upper Trinity Groundwater Conservation District (UTGCD) west of Fort Worth, the share of groundwater used by frackers was 40 percent in the first half of 2011, up from 25 percent in 2010.
In the midst of a severe drought, Chesapeake Energy pumps 4 million gallons of water from a river for a fracking operation in Fort Worth."Obviously, that's a pretty heavy draw on an aquifer when we're in the midst of a drought," says Bob Patterson, UTGCD's general manager. In his water district, 40 to 50 wells have run dry and many municipalities have declared stage two or stage three drought conditions, which involve severe restrictions on residential outdoor water use. But natural gas drillers can still pump as much water from the district as they want. Patterson says restrictions targeting drillers in his area would have to be imposed by state agencies or the Legislature, which "has been fairly lax." He and many other water managers want Texas Gov. Rick Perry to place limits on the drillers.
Critics of fracking claim the industry actually uses far more water than it lets on. Because water used in the fracking process becomes contaminated with hydrocarbons and other toxins, frackers typically sequester it deep underground, removing that wastewater permanently from the hydrologic cycle. Unlike the water used for irrigation or daily living, it doesn't reenter rivers, aquifers, or the atmosphere. "Fracking water is typically not recycled," says Paul Hudak, a hydrologist with the University of North Texas. "It's not really economical."
A similar battle is playing out in the Eagle Ford Shale zone of south Texas, where, due to a quirk of geology, wells typically require four times more fracking water than those in the Barnett Shale area. Each Eagle Ford well uses an average 13 million gallons of water, enough to supply the needs of 240 adults for a year. Some farmers in the area have refused to sell water to the drillers for fear of not having enough for their crops. ExxonMobil has taken to recycling fracking fluids, and Anadarko Petroleum is replacing dirt roads with limestone to cut down on water needed for dust control.
Faced with drillers' booming water needs, some Texas cities have taken matters into their own hands, charging drillers more for water or refusing to sell to them at all. A group of cities, including Fort Worth, is encouraging drillers to tap into a new pipeline that would let them purchase reclaimed industrial water at reduced rates. The UTGCD's Patterson urges drillers to recycle their wastewater, but says he lacks the legal authority to make them do it.
Prior to the drought, opposition to fracking typically focused on the industry's potential to contaminate drinking water, befoul the air, and disrupt neighborhoods with noisy drilling operations. But in the long run, opponents now see the industry's thirst as a major sticking point. A 2007 study by the Texas Water Development Board estimated that fracking could consume up to 13 percent of the Barnett Shale zone's groundwater by 2025—water the area may not have to spare if droughts like this one become more commonplace.
"It's a symbol of the arrogance of these companies that they can run these pipes all through the park," said Young, a founder of Fort Worth Citizens Against Neighborhood Drilling Ordinance. "This is not doing the public any good at all, but these companies don't care because they're making money."

Welcome to your new blog ...

Welcome to the Mountain Creek Neighborhood Alliance blog.  The purpose of the Alliance and this blog is to help residents of the Mountain Creek area of Dallas share information about subjects that could affect Mountain Creek Neighborhoods and the City of Dallas ... either positively or negatively.  Informed neighbors make for a better community! 

The 2 current issues of concern for our neighborhoods are Redistricting for City Council Elections and the pending Gas Well Drilling sites at Camp Wisdom/FM 1382 and at Hensley Field.  The Hensley Field site will be the first gas drilling application to come up for a vote at the Dallas City Council in October, 2011.  The outcome of the Hensley Field application will determine the outcome of future gas drilling applications in the City of Dallas.

Here is your opportunity for citizen input on gas well drilling in your neighborhood:

Public Hearing/Comments

Dallas Gas Drilling Task Force

August 2, 2011 at 7pm

Dallas City Hall
 L1F Auditorium
1500 Marilla

Dallas, TX 75201

Please visit links for more information on Gas Drilling in Texas.