Texas, where a small town finds itself in a showdown with Big Oil after it tried to pass a ban on fracking within its city limits. On Tuesday night, residents of Denton, about 30 miles north of Dallas-Fort Worth, packed a city council meeting to oppose a vote to repeal the ban. The vote was ultimately tabled. The move comes after Texas lawmakers passed a new law that prohibits such bans. The measure went into effect on Monday. That same morning, three protesters locked themselves to the entrance of the first fracking well to reopen. A police sergeant thanked the three and shook their hands before putting them in handcuffs.
It was just this past November that nearly 60 percent of Denton, Texas, residents supported the ban at the ballot box. But they were immediately threatened with lawsuits by the Texas Oil and Gas Association and the Texas General Land Office. Those same interests worked with lawmakers and the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC, to pass this new ban on fracking bans known as House Bill 40. Now residents could consider their own legal tactics. They are represented by the same lawyer who successfully defended a constitutional challenge to a fracking ban in Dryden, New York. All of this comes as Oklahoma became the second state to ban fracking bans on Friday. Meanwhile, Maryland became the second state, after New York, to ban fracking.
Tara Linn Hunter talking:
what we’re seeing is that our vote has been disregarded and overturned with the passage of House Bill 40. So that nullifies our ban and makes it unenforceable. And what we’re seeing now is that residents are willing to go out every morning to the frack site and put themselves on the line to enforce their ordinance and make the vote of the people heard.
Our ban was completely legal. We went through the citizens’ initiative process to get that on the ballot. It’s a petition process. We only needed 500 signatures; we got 2,000. And we put it to a vote to the people of Denton. And they overwhelmingly voted to ban fracking. So it was a completely legal process that we followed. And then, they passed House Bill 40. They basically had to go change the law in order to beat us.
I got involved because I moved to Denton to study music, specifically singing. We’re known for our music and art in my town. I’m very proud of that. And while I was there, I developed debilitating adult asthma. So I started looking into our air quality issues, and I realized that Denton—the American Lung Association has given Denton an F-quality air. So I started researching the sources of air pollution, and then I came across fracking pretty quick.
People are very concerned. I attended a town hall meeting in Irving that was packed. Hundreds and hundreds of people poured out after feeling there homes shake. There’s injection wells near there. And people are very concerned and very upset.
in Denton alone, we have 300 gas wells in our city limits. They’re less than 250 feet from homes. Some of the neighborhood signs actually wrap around the walls that surround the frack wells. So this is really—you know, it’s near our hospitals, our schools, so forth.
Some of the companies that are operating there, one of them is Vantage. One of them is EagleRidge. EagleRidge was caught dumping chemicals into Hickory Creek. Just a few weeks ago, Vantage had one of their wells explode just outside of a neighborhood. That fire went on for about seven hours. EagleRidge had a blowout near our airport. Homes were evacuated. That one, the blowout didn’t stop for 14 hours. And we found levels of benzene when we did air samples. So, these are some of the companies that are operating in our city.
our representative, Myra Crownover, our senator, Craig Estes, really disregarded their own constituents’ votes and voted for House Bill 40. The Texas Tribune does a wonderful job of laying out potential conflicts of interest, and they show, you know, how many of our politicians, including these two, are really oil-soaked and that they have direct investment in oil and gas and receive contributions, campaign contributions, from the oil and gas industry.
Three days later after Texas lawmakers voted to prohibit city bans on fracking, lighting struck a frack well in Denton and set it on fire. The well is operated by Vantage, the same company that opened new fracking sites in Denton this week after Texas lifted city bans on fracking. Just last month, a Vantage gas wellhead malfunctioned and began leaking fracking fluid in nearby Arlington, where dozens of homes were evacuated after the company took two hours to notify officials of the emergency. In December, the company agreed to pay a nearly $1 million fine after it violated waste disposal regulations at one of its oil wells in Franklin Township, Pennsylvania.
Police were thanking us for our community service as they were arresting us. And when we got to the station, they let us out on personal recognizance, you know, saying that we’re not a threat to the community. I think that they’re very sympathetic to the cause, because if you live in Denton, you’re aware of the effects of fracking in your daily life. So I hope that that sympathy continues as we move forward. But it was a very civil exchange.
I think that our residents are very interested in seeing the city, you know, uphold the vote of the people. And so, last night we packed a city council meeting and unanimously requested that they not be the ones to repeal the ban themselves. So we’re looking at the best strategy moving forward. How can we fight House Bill 40? On a larger scale, how can we really tell—continue to tell our powerful narrative of a small Texas town standing up to a billion-dollar industry? It’s a real David-and-Goliath story. On the ground, we’re continuing our education efforts to get people.
— source democracynow.org
Tara Linn Hunter, volunteer coordinator for Frack Free Denton. She was arrested on Monday as part of protests to stop the first new fracking well since Denton residents voted to pass a fracking ban last November.