Arlington voted down natural gas drilling expansion last year. The battle isn’t over
Following contentious debate last summer, Arlington City Council members voted against expanding natural gas drilling near dozens of homes and a daycare center in the city’s eastern section. The decision attracted national media attention and cheers from environmental groups hoping to see more local oversight of natural gas sites.
“I think that no vote was a recognition that it was important to protect a vulnerable community,” said Ranjana Bhandari, who organized opposition as executive director of Liveable Arlington. “It was important to look at the disproportionate impact of this particular drill site on a community of color struggling with many disadvantages, including high poverty rates.”
Bhandari sensed the permit denial would not stop French energy giant Total from pursuing more drilling opportunities in Tarrant County. Now, just over a year later, she is preparing to fight the same battle all over again.
Earlier this month, Total’s Fort Worth division, TEP Barnett, filed a permit application that would allow the company to drill more gas wells at 2000 South Watson Road — the same 6.7-acre property at the center of last June’s controversy.
Kevin Strawser, a spokesman for TEP Barnett, confirmed the application’s submission but did not offer specifics on how many new gas wells are planned for the site, known as AC360. Two wells are already located there, according to a 2020 city staff report.
The permit application meets all city requirements when it comes to well placement, Strawser added, and all of the wells will be more than 600 feet away from “protected uses,” including the nearby Mother’s Heart Learning Center.
“We are eager to bring this amendment application to the Arlington Planning and Zoning Committee and the City Council for consideration,” Strawser said in an email. “We look forward to discussing and providing details about our plans and operations at this site and in general.”
Richard Gertson, Arlington’s assistant director of planning and development services, said it typically takes one to two months for his department to analyze the application and process it for the council’s consideration. He didn’t have additional information on TEP Barnett’s plans for AC360.
For Bhandari, preparations for the upcoming council decision have already begun. She and other members of Liveable Arlington, an environmental advocacy group founded in 2015, are beginning to engage with council members about gas well drilling policies and forming plans for notifying neighbors about TEP Barnett’s permit application.
“We have to talk to the council because there’s so many new people and it takes us a long time to get to know them and to give them reasons for why this is damaging,” Bhandari said. “Most people come to council and they’re just not aware of the risks and dangers and harms.”
Residents worried about public health, safety
Many Arlington residents are increasingly concerned about how drilling near schools and daycare centers can lead to higher rates of childhood asthma, leukemia and birth defects, Bhandari said.
A year-long investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting found that more than 30,000 Arlington kids go to school near a drilling site, potentially exposing them to respiratory health risks.
When council members voted 6-3 against granting TEP Barnett’s permit last summer, their chief concerns were equitable public health and safety, particularly in communities of color hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Star-Telegram reports.
Wanda Vincent, the director and owner of Mother’s Heart, asked whether TEP Barnett could promise that her customers would not suffer adverse health effects from drilling.
“With all this going on, it makes me wonder down the line: Will some of our babies become sick or ill because of this?” she asked during a council meeting last summer.
In his statement, Strawser said the company has continuously operated safely at the AC360 site for more than 10 years “without incident.”
“TEP Barnett is a committed community partner with a noted safety record in Arlington and across the DFW region,” Strawser said. “Our TEP Barnett team members also work and live in the DFW area and we work diligently every day to ensure the safety and quality of life for our neighbors near our sites.”
Bhandari said that record has been called into question, citing a November incident when Arlington officials temporarily shut down a TEP Barnett site for violating the city’s gas well ordinance. The company used a diesel rig rather than the required electric rig, which produces smaller amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and noise than its counterpart.
Council vote comes with legal implications
Moving forward, activists are calling for city council members to honor the decision of former council members that was “made for all the right reasons,” Bhandari said.
Arlington officials are likely worried that they could face legal action from oil and gas companies for restricting their operations, she added. House Bill 40, signed into law in 2015, prohibits cities from banning drilling within city limits and from implementing any regulations that are not “commercially reasonable.”
Since the AC360 expansion came up for debate last summer, Arlington has instituted new rules for drilling near daycare centers. Operators are now required to measure 600 feet between the day care building or the area designated for a playground and the drill zone. Previously, drillers did not have to include playground space in their measurements and, in some cases, could drill less than 300 feet away from play areas if they received a waiver.
“It’s just the regulatory environment that we operate in is such that we can impose and enforce certain types of restrictions up to a point, but it can never rise to the point of a ban on gas well drilling,” Gertson told the Star-Telegram in June. “Regardless of how we feel about the health issue, we cannot do it.”
The potential for a lawsuit should not deter City Council members from making what Bhandari believes is a clear moral choice.
“Council acknowledged that drilling next to children is terrible,” she said. “They acknowledged that there was a disproportionate impact on a community of color. So my question is: Do they forget once the cameras are gone?”
