Oil/gas industry insiders outlined our delimma:

The rapid expansion of drilling into Tarrant County, combined with high rates of population growth, sets the stage for potential conflicts as to land usage, environmental stewardship, the rights of mineral owners and the exploiters of those minerals.

There are several significant challenges that face the expansion of the Barnett Shale play outside its core area, including bottom seal and gas pipeline/gathering infrastructure and gas marketing issues. Additional challenges faced in the urban portion of the play include onerous oil and gas lease provisions, air quality attainment issues, visual impact and noise standards, conflicting municipal and home owner association regulations and frac water cost and availability.
(Source: Barnett Shale and Other Fort Worth Basin Plays - Ellison Miles Memorial Symposium -June 22-23, 2004,Ellison Miles Geotechnology Institute,  Brookhaven College, Farmers Branch, Texas)

Two gas drilling ordinance issues will be discussed Tuesday at the Arlington City Council meeting:.

1. How far (set-back) gas wells are to be drilled from houses and schools, churches and businesses.  State law allows 300 feet. City of Fort Worth restricts them to a 600 foot set-back. I think that 1000 foot is a more reasonable distance for safety and quality of life issues.  The closer the set-back, the more pipelines will be run throughout the city. Most gas accidents occur when people dig into pipelines. Drilling rigs eventually are taken down but the pipelines remain. Despite laws that require contractors to call before digging, cutting through pipelines is a common. Citizens in Arlington deserve a margin of safety; when considering accidents involving explosions or the necessity of allowing natural gas to "burn itself out" in a densely populated urban area, 1000 feet between drilling sites and residence, schools and businesses is not too much.

2.  The City Council will consider requiring drilling companies to use a "closed loop" drilling system with bins to collect the drilling waste instead of open pits.  This should be a requirement. Open pits allow for seepage of contaminated liquids into the soil and endanger aquifers and groundwater. Even though Arlington does not get municipal drinking water from aquifers, neighboring Pantego and Dal Worthington Gardens municipal drinking water is from wells. One drilling accident in Arlington which contaminates a neighboring communities drinking water could easily wipe out all the "profits" from gas leases.

Bins vs. Pits
If they do not restrict drilling to bins instead of pits, we'll see a series of nasty, two acre ponds spring up all over Arlington adjacent to drilling sites. These ponds are filled with foul smelling toxic sludge. They are dangerous to pets, wildlife and children.  We require gates around swimming pools. Even though children are told not to swim in creeks during flash floods, some do. Warning children to stay out of the drilling site sludge ponds will not keep them out. It is more difficult to fence in a two acre pond than it is to contain drilling waste in bins. Here's what a sludge pit looks like.

In Arlington drilling companies are going to utilize slant drilling. Some of us became familiar with the technique back in the 1960s. It was used to drain the resources from underneath neighbors land. Those who got the check and those who actually owned the gas or oil were usually not the same once slick operators drilled slanted wells. Now they are using them to allow several wells to be drilled from one drilling site in densely populated areas like Arlington. It has allowed exploration of River Legacy Park with the actual drill site being in the Arlington Municipal Land Fill.

The first wells in Arlington have been on municipal property away from residences.  During Phase II they are beginning to drill on ASID property, UTA and the Masonic Home property. The Mason's have considerable acreage but their property is near residences.  Drilling on school property is much more problematic. School administrators and Board members are trying to solve budgetary problems with gas royalties. The safety of children is more important than seeking quick-fixes for school district budgets.

Phase III will be in residential area on private property.

Accident - What isn't expected to happen.
It is important to remember that accidents are what happens when people don't expect anything to happen.  Even though we are told "that it is safe," that "accidents are rare," and we "have nothing to worry about",  there is no one that can assure us that an accident won't happen.  Three very vivid examples are etched in my mind. The New London School explosion was cause by a leak of unscented natural gas which cost the life of a generation of school children. It led to the requirement of adding a chemical to gas to give it a scent. However, sometimes the scent is filtered out in the soil. The explosion in Cleburne which cost Hazel Pawlik's her life and injured several famil members was one where witnesses have testified that there was no scent of gas in the house before it blew up. The couple noted that when they lit a match they got flares like you get when you open a flame on a stove. The house was all electric. It was determined that gas collected in the sewer system from a leak in a natural gas pipeline.  

A similar event occurred while I was living in Grand Prairie. Residents reported the scent of gas in their neighborhood but the gas company was unable to locate a gas leak. I only lived a few blocks from the edge of that devastated neighborhood. It was a neighborhood of well maintained modest three bedroom homes where many familes had lived for 20 to 30 years. After gas leaked into the sewer system, and exploded, that neighborhood (a ten block radius) looked like an atomic bomb had hit it. Homes were condemned for ten blocks. Most were considered total losses by the insurance companies.

The gas company said "it couldn't happen". People believed it wouldn't happen. Even after it occurred, engineers argued that it was a "freak occurrence" and not something that anyone could "expect to happen again here or elsewhere."  Driving through that neighborhood convinced me that we need to exercise extra caution. Just because we're told that "it can't happen" or "it won't happen" doesn't mean that it "hasn't happened" or it "won't really happen."  Having seen what occurred in New Boston and Grand Prairie and Cleburne, I don't think mixing school children and gas drilling is a good combination.  I don't think doubling and tripling and quadrupling the miles of pipelines underneath a densely populated city is a smart. I don't think billions of dollars of royalties is a good enough trade for increasing the risk to children, families and fellow citizens.

Texas needs a 1000 foot setback requirement for gas drilling in urban areas.

Arlington needs a 1000 foot setback requirement to minimize the additional pipelines which will be necessary to serve gas wells. Arlington must have closed loop drilling systems.  

Another ordinance Arlington needs to enact and enforce is a requirement that generators and equipment used on drilling sites much be clean.  Nine counties in the DFW N. Texas Area are non-attainment air quality area. The EPA announced that air quality targets would not be met because of the escalation of gas drilling in the region.  Air Quality planners had failed to incorporate

the emissions rich-burn" gas compressor engines which produce high levels of nitrogen oxide (NOx) located near individual gas wells or at extraction junctions, used to move natural gas to market.

Though most produce less than 500 horsepower, official estimates indicate the engines emit 32 tons of NOx per day and contribute to the growing Metroplex air quality problem.

See Regional Focus on Air Quality

These compressors need to be retrofitted in order to comply with new rules. Senate Bill 2000 established a $4 million dollar grant program to help reduce emissions from these engines. The City of Arlington needs to require all drillers to use engines which do not emit NOx.  

The City cannot rely on the State and Federal Government to protect our city. We need strong ordinances and strict enforcement. We certainly cannot rely on the Mayor Pro Tem to protect our environment. Ron Wright, though many things, is not environmentally conservative.  
The failure of air quality planners to estimate the ozone emissions of generators and equipment used on drilling sites caused the EPA to notify this region that this area will not achieve air quality targets in 2010.