Arlington City Council reverses decision, denies permit for gas well drilling near daycare
Arlington’s City Council voted 5-4 Tuesday to deny a permit request from a French energy firm to drill gas wells near a daycare in the city, an upset vote after the council gave the wells its initial nod of approval in November.
Rebecca Boxall, councilwoman for District 5, flipped her vote. She voted in favor of the permit during the council’s Nov. 30 meeting but against it in the final vote Tuesday night, dashing French company Total Energy’s American arm TEP Barnett’s plans to drill at 2000 S. Watson Road.
TEP Barnett will be able to refile for a permit to drill new wells at that location after one year, according to a city spokesperson.
The council’s initial approval for the special use permit to create the drilling zone led to a lawsuit by the owner of the nearby daycare and Liveable Arlington, a nonprofit operating in the city. Speakers during the public comment portion of Tuesday’s meeting talked about their fears for children’s health, air quality and the fact that the well would be drilled in a minority-majority community.
Ranjana Bhandari, executive director of Liveable Arlington, said her organization expects to withdraw the lawsuit without prejudice in the next few days at the advice of an attorney.
The lawsuit contended that a city ordinance requires a supermajority vote for the council to approve a permit close to protected properties such as schools and daycares.
“The immediate harm from that previous vote is temporarily gone,” Bhandari told the Star-Telegram. “There were certain issues we raised about what certain parts of our gas drilling ordinance mean and if that ordinance is ignored or read differently by people who make decisions, then we may have look at legal options again at that point.”
Boxall’s vote was unexpected to the 11 Arlington community members who spoke against TEP Barnett’s plans at Tuesday’s meeting, eliciting cheers as the tally was displayed on screens around the council chambers.
Wanda Vincent, owner of Mother’s Heart Learning Center childcare and one of the plaintiffs in the suit against the city, said the permit was an issue of equity.
Vincent said the permit would go against the city’s mission of fostering great communities and neighborhoods, citing worries that the drill site would put people, especially children like those at her daycare, at risk of adverse health effects.
“Does everyone in this city deserve the same quality of air or are we choosing ZIP codes?” one speaker, a UT Arlington student, asked the council during his public forum time.
It is unclear whether the vote rejecting the permit might lead TEP Barnett to file a suit of its own to contest the council’s Tuesday reversal, which some city officials have said they feared might happen.
A spokesperson for TEP Barnett could not immediately be reached for comment.
Boxall’s decision to vote against
Boxall was not accepting requests for interviews Wednesday, but released a statement on her campaign Facebook page.
“I struggled with this vote,” Boxall wrote on her campaign Facebook page. “It pitted two principles I hold dear against each other. One had to give way to the other and it was hard.”
Boxall said in the post she made her decision to change her vote before the lawsuit against the city was filed. She wrote she was also not swayed by the appeals of those opposed to the wells, calling many misleading.
Her decision was based on her own experiences, she wrote. Growing up on the Texas coast, where she said she lived in the middle of oil refineries, had an impact on her decision to change her vote.
“I know all about the true cost of energy and who bears it most,” Boxall wrote.
But communities that consume energy should bear those costs, she wrote. It was the voices of her constituents, shared before the meeting, that changed her mind in the end.
“Perhaps my vote will make a difference in how people perceive themselves as citizens and their important place in the governing process,” Boxall wrote.
She added that she respects the votes of the mayor and other council members who supported the wells, believing they voted in good faith for the interests of the community, and that “efforts to frame energy company Total in the most negative light possible are not helpful.”
Total had agreed to limit future wells to areas over 600 feet away from protected buildings, which City Attorney Galen Gatten said at the time of November’s meeting legally allowed the city to approve a different drill zone by a simple majority vote.
‘Great news for this little part of east Arlington’
Bhandari said the vote Tuesday night was a victory for her organization, the residents of east Arlington and, most importantly to her, the children in the area.
Liveable Arlington already had concerns about air quality in that part of the city, Bhandari said, and those concerns still exist. But members of the nonprofit are celebrating, even as they recover from the stress and long hours she said went into preparing for Tuesday’s meeting.
“As a mother I can relate to the fears of the parents whose children are there,” Bhandari said. “That’s what drove me to found this group and do this work so everyone at Liveable is really really happy that this led to the result last night.”
This story was originally published January 5, 2022 at 12:55 PM.