On Tuesday, February 28, 2012, the Dallas Gas Drilling Task Force met for the final time to conclude their discussions and finalize their recommendations to make to the Dallas City Council ahead of the re-write of the Dallas gas drilling ordinance, the current version of which is out-of-date considering what is now known about the hydraulic fracturing process and the risks associated with it.

Among other concerns, the Task Force recommendations include weakening or continuing weak protections for residential areas, floodplains and parks. The full recommendations to the City Council can be read HERE. Some of the more egregous recommendations are:

These represent only the worst recommendations, and there are several others that are troublesome because they fail to protect public health and safety, property and the environment. The work of the Task Force left a lot to be desired, and it makes it incumbent upon citizens to become active in demanding a stronger ordinance from our City Council. Take a stand for yourself and your fellow Dallasites - get involved today while there is still time to act!

It is useless to drill wells unless there is a pipeline infrastructure to gather and carry that gas output to compressor stations and then on to distribution stations. For an example of what can happen when things go wrong with a natural gas pipeline please visit San Bruno, California. This is what could happen in Dallas!

Myth Busting

The natural gas industry tries to fool us into believing that they are good corporate citizens who are doing their best to protect us while also providing us with cheap domestic energy. The issue of water use in hydraulic fracturing has been a bone of contention, especially during our prolonged drought where we are restricted in our use of fresh water for lawncare, car washing, filling swimming pools and operating non-recirculating fountains, among other restrictions. Lately, claims are surfacing claiming that industry is having "great success" in cleaning and re-using flowback and produced water from their drilling operations to reduce the impact on our watershed and hydrologic cycle. But, the truth is buried in their own propaganda websites and their own statements on those websites.

On the website of Barnett Progress industry makes the statement, "Given the high salt content of produced water, it is impractical for producers to recycle large quantities of the water left over from hydraulic fracturing. However, through dedicated industry efforts, North Texas producers are now able to clean and reuse more produced water than ever before. While water reuse remains a challenging process, producers in the Barnett strive to develop new ways to conserve and reclaim water." On the same page they go on to say that they have successfully treated and re-used 700 million gallons of water, and on its face that sounds like a major accomplishment until you analyze the facts.

Each Barnett Shale gas well uses an average of about 5 million gallons of fresh water for every frac job. There are over 20,000 gas wells in the Barnett Shale alone. 700 million gallons of water is the equivalent of 140 frac jobs out of over 20,000, and the amount of water industry is cleaning and re-using is about 7 gallons out of every 1,000 gallons they use, which means that out of every 1,000 gallons of fresh water used to frac wells 993 gallons remains untreated and unable to be re-used. Those 993 gallons out of every 1,000 gallons are then permanently removed from our hydrologic cycle and forever lost for human, animal and plant consumption.

Do not be fooled by large numbers that attempt to confuse and mislead people into believing what is not really the truth. By their own words we know that industry is unable to clean and re-use significant amounts of their flowback and produced water. If citizens have to face water restrictions, then an idustry that uses and permanently pollutes huge volumes of fresh water should be even more restricted in its access to and use of our vital and limited fresh water supply.