If Texans can't live with fracking, Californians can't either

Fracking started in my back yard and has spread like a virus around the globe.

Scarred by twelve years spent working in the oil and gas industry, in June 1996, I moved to paradise in the middle of nowhere in Wise County Texas where--€“unknown by me€--Mitchell Energy was experimenting trying to figure out how to frack oil and gas from the Barnett Shale formation about 8,000 feet deep in the earth. According to Congressional testimony (video), the two technologies, horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, were "married" in 2002 right in my backyard. These two technologies release the gas that is tightly packed in the rock formation lying deep under a 16 county area in North Texas called the Barnett Shale. The coupling of two old technologies, horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, has fueled a new, national and international drilling boom.

From the beginning, water contamination was a consequence of drilling in the Barnett Shale.  In 1987, a landowner named Jim Bartlett sued Mitchell Energy because his newly drilled water well was contaminated with methane and hydrogen sulfide gas.

Texas Supreme Court ruling discouraged suits against gas drillers (no longer online)
Star-Telegram, December 28,2009
By MIKE LEE

The first time that Jim Bartlett realized something was wrong with his new place in Wise County was when he filled up an Igloo cooler with water from his newly drilled well.

"€œWe were sitting in there watching TV, and the lid blew off,"€ he said.

Bartlett and his wife, Pat, had just bought 2 acres at the end of a dirt road outside Boyd. It turned out that the water in their newly drilled well was shot full of natural gas. It also contained hydrogen sulfide, a corrosive gas that is sometimes produced along with natural gas. When they put the water in a closed container, it tended to pop the lid off. The hydrogen sulfide built up enough that it darkened silver coins inside the house.

In 1996, when the case finally went to trial, a Wise County jury awarded the Bartletts, and several other plaintiffs, $200 million in punitive damages.  As a result of the lawsuit, the Railroad Commission of Texas investigated and found that more than 100 wells in the county  "didn'€™t have enough surface casing to protect groundwater and that records about the surface casing had been falsified."€  The jury'€™s verdict was eventually overturned by the oil soaked Texas Supreme Court.

Most often, when families sue fracking companies for health and environmental damages, the company negotiates an out of court settlement that requires a gag order.  In order to be made (financially) whole so they can get their families to safety, plaintiffs must agree not to tell their stories to warn other families and communities.  This cycle of denial allows the fracking industry and our government to continue to claim there is no "€œproof"€ of fracking'€™s harm.

In a recent Texas case, the Parrs did not settle. When a jury of their peers was presented with both sides of the fracking argument, they found fracking guilty to the tune of $3 million.  This has significantly undermined industry's and our government's argument that fracking is safe.

A newly filed bill by Senator Whitehouse, Safety over Secrecy, would protect public health by ending secrecy in certain civil settlements.

This fracking is not like that fracking.

California has vast experience with oil and gas development. Bakersfield looks like a barren planet populated only by giant grasshoppers pecking away at the ground. But you haven'€™t seen anything like the brutality of this new kind of oil and gas development.

It was about 2002 when fracking first blipped on my radar screen. At that time, no one in Texas thought fracking was a bad idea, and the industry'€™s intentionally misleading reassurance of fracking as an established technology was widely accepted.  By 2005 some knew first-hand the brutality of modern fracking that uses new chemical mixtures and millions, rather than thousands, of gallons of water injected at far higher pressures--€”and couples that with horizontal drilling.

By 2009, it was clear that fracking brought with it some unpleasant impacts. Municipalities in Texas started passing stronger drilling ordinances to keep fracking out. Corinth, Southlake, Dish and Flower Mound all beefed up their ordinances in an attempt to protect the public and property. Flower Mound has been sued five times by industry for their ordinance, but each time the city has prevailed.

Last year, Dallas passed an ordinance that industry called a defacto ban because, like Flower Mound, they require a 1500’ setback.

Now, after 5 years of up close and personal experience trying to make fracking a good neighbor, people in Denton, Texas have decided to ban fracking in the city. If passed, Denton will be the first major city in Texas to ban fracking and the first city nationwide to ban fracking with active permits.

After years of effort, I have come to realize that the compatibility strategy is a failure. We can either have fracking or a safe, healthy, and vibrant city. We cannot have both. In calling for a ban on hydraulic fracturing, we are choosing our safety over their profits. We are choosing our community over their reckless pursuit of commodities. We are choosing the health of our children over a shortsighted, poisonous, and unsustainable fossil fuel addiction.

It’s time for a frack free Denton

I will tell you this, Dear California Friends: If Texans can'€™t live with fracking, no one can!

It'€™s time for a frack free planet.

This is no longer about Texas or Pennsylvania or California because fracking threatens us all. Massive releases, such as the ones shown by the CU-Boulder study and in the video below, are detrimental to the future of our planet. Additional fracking of California'€™s Monterey Shale would release huge amounts of methane into the atmosphere, further exacerbating the effects of climate change. Fugitive emissions of methane from the production and transportation process through leaks can deter, and in some cases reverse, the gains California has made to combat climate change. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 86 times more powerful in warming our planet than carbon dioxide.

More than half of all Californians support a moratorium on fracking, until the full effects of the practice are understood. SB1132 by Senator Mitchell and Senator Leno follows the will of Californians. It would allow the state to fully understand the negative effects of fracking, and other unconventional well stimulation techniques.

Although the industry argues that fracking has been happening in California for decades, we must understand that this is NOT your grandfather'€™s of father'€™s fracking. Let's ensure that all Californians are equally protected.

Jhon Arbelaez contributed to this post.

NOTE for nitpickers: For the purposes of this post fracking means fracking-enabled drilling.

California Fracking Moratorium Blogathon May 20-May 23, 2014 Key votes will be held this week on California Senate Bill 1132, which imposes a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking as it commonly known. The fracking process poses many unacceptable public policy risks. These include contaminating water supplies; degrading public health; disproportionately affecting low income families and communities of color; using scarce water supplies in drought-stricken states; causing earthquakes; and harming wildlife and habitat fragmentation. If the bill fails, the legislative process toward moratorium must restart next January. Please join us for a blogathon May 19-23 in a campaign to tell lawmakers to support this bill. This is a coordinated effort with a coalition of more than a dozen NGOs, including Earth Works, Sierra Club, and Center for Race, Poverty and the Environment. And please call key lawmakers, ASAP. Tell them YES on SB 1132! Sen. Kevin De Leon: [phone] Sen. Ricardo Lara: [phone] Sen. Ed Hernandez: [phone] Sen. Cathleen Galgiani: [phone] Sen. Ben Hueso: [phone] Sen. Lou Correa: [phone] Sen. Carol Liu: [phone] Sen. Richard Roth: [phone] Sen. Norma Torres: [phone] Please Help Pass a Moratorium on Fracking in California! More details are in this announcement diary by boatsie.