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.

Gas Industry Pushing to Drill in Our Neighborhood Next?

Reprinted from the Dallas Observer

What the Frack: Task Force Isn't Done, But City Moves Closer to Issuing First Drilling Permit

By Leslie Minora Wed., Oct. 12 2011 at 8:32 AM 

North Lake map with Valley Ranch to the East and Irving to the West

 

​ XTO and Trinity East, two of the companies that have paid the city big money and signed leases to drill for gas within the city limits, have agreed to wait 30 months while the city rewrites its gas drilling ordinance. But one company has no such deal with the city: Chief Oil & Gas, which, we discovered at yesterday's meeting of the gas drilling task force, is moving ahead with its longstanding plans to drill on a site owned by Luminant at North Lake, near Coppell but within the Dallas city limits. "Luminant is providing the minerals and the land. Chief is providing the know-how and the drilling," said Dallas Cothrum of Masterplan, the land-use consulting company representing Chief.

In order to drill, companies must obtain site-specific zoning permission from city council -- a specific use permit (SUP) -- as well as a city permit, which is issued according to technical standards, providing that the company submits materials demonstrating that they are in accordance with the city's current drilling ordinance. Meanwhile, the Dallas drilling task force is crafting updated ordinance recommendations, which they will vote on next month before submitting to the city council.

But before it began revising its drilling ordinance, the city approved five SUPs for drilling sites, and Chief is the only one currently moving forward in the permitting process, as documented in the letter below from Masterplan, which ends with the line, "Finally, I cannot remember an occurrence when it took the city so long to issue a permit for an allowed use."

Theresa O'Donnell, the city's director of Sustainable Development and Construction, said her office has requested additional information from Chief. And if the company complies with the current ordinance, she said, the city must grant a permit allowing fracking on the site. Currently, she said during her zoning presentation to the drilling task force yesterday, the application is "substantially complete."

If a permit is issued, there is legally nothing stopping Chief from drilling on the site. "We're perfecting our package and plan to resubmit this week," said Cothrum. Depending on a variety of factors, drilling could begin before the end of the year -- which is what Chief said last year, following the resolution of a host of other controversies involving the property.

"We want to see if there's gas there," Cothrum said. "We wouldn't have gone through the process if we weren't serious about finding out if there's gas at North Lake."

The North Lake location is relatively secluded from residential neighborhoods, O'Donnell told the task force. "We could see the activity," she said, and "watch the process without having any immediately adjacent neighbors that are affected by it."

Potential fracking sites for which the city has granted SUPs will be held to the city's current ordinance rather than being forced to comply with the revisions currently under consideration. "They'd be perfectly within their rights to say no [to complying with a revised ordinance], but we could ask," O'Donnell said, addressing this issue yesterday during her zoning and permitting presentation to the drilling task force. She told Unfair Park that, generally, "You get to play by the set of rules that are in place at the time of your application."

O'Donnell made it clear that Dallas does not have a moratorium on fracking, but reiterated that until now, gas drilling companies that have paid the city millions for leases have voluntarily stalled their applications.

"We've asked them to hold off," she said. "They're just voluntarily keeping their application suspended."

But with Chief's pursuance of a drilling permit, the promise is disintegrating. She told the task force that companies holding those leases "could come in and submit all their documentation for a permit this afternoon if they would like." In other words: Dallas could be fracked.

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

Severe Drought ... and Joe Pool Lake

So far, we've had 58 consecutive days of 100+ temperatures and lakes that supply Dallas water are becoming depleted.  It's gotten so bad, the neighboring town of Kemp in Kaufman County lost running water, because of the extreme heat and drought conditions, and couldn't fight fires.

The City of Dallas has proposed a 5.9%  water rate increase in the 2011-2012 Dallas City Budget.  A pipeline is being built to Palestine, TX at a cost of $850 million.  New reservoirs or connections to sources in Oklahoma are being considered.

And closer to home .... there are two proposed/pending gas drilling sites in the Mountain Creek area waiting for recommendations from the Dallas City Gas Drilling Task Force to the Dallas City Council.  Each well frack uses an average of 5 million gallons per frack.  Wells are usually fracked multiple times and there are usually multiple wells on a gas pad site.

After the water is used for fracking, it is toxic and has to be buried into other wells. It is cost prohibitive to recycle.  The water is taken out of the hydrologic cycle.

Residents are asking questions:

• Has the City of Dallas projected the gas industries heavy need for water into their Plans?

• What is the average rate per gallon for residents?

• What is the average commercial rate per gallon?

• What is the rate per gallon of untreated water for the gas industry, considering the water used is taken out of the hydrologic cycle?

Or maybe we need water for living  .... not burying.