We’ve seen this myth unravel again and again. Whether it’s Chesapeake Energy stiffing folks on royalties or local Pennsylvanians telling us there were a few jobs for them at first in the oil and gas fields being drilled in their own backyards but they quickly got phased out by guys from Texas, it’s clear fracking is not the local economic savior the industry makes it out to be.

The residents of Denton, Texas are seeing what fracked communities from Pennsylvania to Colorado are seeing. Adam Briggle says it all in our video of the week, “We get the off the book costs, the pollution, the spills, the noise, ozone and doctors bills, the truck traffic, lost property values and blowouts while the lion’s share of the wealth pours out of town.”

And they’re fed up. They’ve tried to regulate fracking to keep wells away from their homes and schools, but they’ve discovered what others across the country have. The only way to keep our communities safe is to ban fracking.

Frack Free Denton has gathered more than the required signatures to put their fracking ban initiative on the November ballot. A ban in Texas, an oil and gas state, would be an incredible victory for the entire anti-fracking movement.

Please watch and share this great short by Adam Briggle of the Denton Drilling Awareness Group that simply, but effectively lays out the facts and destroys the myth that fracking is helping the local community of Denton.

Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator

What struck me most about this incredible reporting from the Center for Public Integrity, InsideClimate News, and The Weather Channel was the segment that begins with an interview with Neil Carman, formally with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. He said that he “dealt with over a thousand citizen complaints. I concluded that when citizens complained about air pollution, they were always right. There was a problem.”  

The industry comes back saying that the data doesn’t show a threat to public health.

Then, Jim Morris, the reporter from the Center for Public Integrity, highlights that the proper data collection that would prove what residents believe is happening is indeed happening isn’t currently being done.

We’ve seen so many similar situations all across the country while investigating for Gasland and Gasland Part II. People know there’s something wrong. Their bodies are telling them something is not right.  Their families have lived on the same land for generations and they are seeing the changes. Every part of them, from their minds, to their eyes, to their guts from their burning throats, nose bleeds, and migraines, is screaming “something is wrong”

I trust these families. I trust them more than the industry. I trust them more than the politicians.

And I trust that you can make a difference. No news report or scientific study is going to make an impact unless you act.

Share this video and join our movement today by signing up and finding your local grassroots group at www.gaslandthemovie.com

And please tweet and post this remarkable new video and report. You can find it here: http://eagleford.publicintegrity.org/

-Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator

After over 45 Gasland Part II screenings across the globe, we’ve seen a lot of awesome activist t-shirts. 

I love them because they always reflect the distinct characteristic of the place we’re at and the people organizing there. One of my favorites is a t-shirt organizers from Denton, Texas made.

Organizers from Denton, Texas

It has a football player dodging through drilling rigs and says ‘Don’t Frack the Home Team’ on the back. But that’s exactly what is happening in Denton, where a drilling rig is right near the Apogee Stadium, where the University of North Texas plays.

And it’s not just the football field. In 2010, a drilling company drilled three wells right next to homes, a hospital, and a public park with a playground, forcing people to come together to form the Denton Drilling Awareness Group which has been fighting for more robust ordinances to protect health, safety, public welfare, and community integrity ever since.

DAG organizers at the Gasland Part II screening in Fort Worth, Texas

We’ve seen this all over the country. Rigs, condensate tanks and compressor stations right in people’s backyards, putting dangerous toxins just a stone’s throw or soft breeze away from families.

Below is a post from Adam Briggle, of the DAG,  reposted from his blog Drilling Denton that will show you just how close to home drilling in Denton is.

Frack to the Future: Why Are Drilling Rigs so Close to Homes in Denton?

Denton’s new drilling ordinance established a 1,200 foot setback between gas wells and protected uses like homes. But the future of fracking in Denton is going to be a story about gas wells much, much closer to homes than that. 

We first got a glimpse of our future in April, just a few months after the ordinance was passed, when a development was approved that would put homes less than 250 feet from gas wells.

Now the picture is becoming even clearer. EagleRidge is drilling two wells simultaneously off of Vintage and S. Bonnie Brae. There are some homes just 100 feet from the pad sites. Many more homes are just 500 feet, or less, away. The diesel engines on site are pumping out black smoke.

I took this picture down there as the school bus was dropping off children. You can see one of the wells (south side)  – there was another one, even closer, behind me as I took the picture. The future of fracking in Denton is going to look like this: polluting industries plopped right next to houses. And all the activity we are seeing now is just the appetizer for the rush that is going to happen when we really start exporting natural gas and prices spike. 

Here is the Railroad Commission GIS image for the wells. 

And just tonight, the Planning and Zoning Commission approved another project that will bring homes 100 feet from a gas well.

You might wonder how this could be when the new ordinance seems to make this illegal. The answer is that the 1,200 foot setback in the ordinance does not apply to situations where new homes are built around existing gas well pad sites. I don’t quite know why this is. It has something to do with vested rights…but it also just seems to be a terrible oversight in the ordinance. DAG recommended fixing this problem. But that idea didn’t get any play.

Most of the pad sites that will ever be in Denton are already platted and at least partly developed. And most of them are south and west of town where lots of our population growth is likely to occur. So, we are going to see more and more situations where homes are in very close proximity to pad sites where new wells will be added and old wells will be reworked and refracked for years to come. And none of this will be covered by our so-called current ordinance. 

We have learned that fracking and neighborhoods do not mix. But we are going to keep on mixing them. 

Some will say that this is acceptable, because those homebuyers are making an informed decision to move next to a gas well. But they are not. They don’t know it is coming. I have heard from several folks in the neighborhood where I took this picture, and they tell me that this came as a surprise. Some say they wouldn’t have bought homes there if they knew this was going to happen.

Oh, and readers of this blog won’t be shocked to learn that the people in this neighborhood do not own any of the mineral rights and, thus, are not making a dime from the drilling. Records from the Denton Central Appraisal District show that the mineral ownership of these wells is split between five owners in Dallas, Austin, Abilene, and Lewisville.

We’ll be posting a couple times a week here, sharing posts from folks we met on the road, updates from the subjects of Gasland and Gasland Part II and a lot of pictures and stories of things we experienced on the road. 

But we also want to hear from you. Send me an email at screenings@gaslandthemovie.com if you want to us to share your story.