Yo, Chuck Silcox – I got your picture right here, buddy.

That’s the nice little house on South Hills Drive you wished you had a picture of at yesterday’s kickoff meeting for the gas drilling ordinance task force. Thought I’d help you out there. Don’t mention it.

What the hell does that have to do with anything? Well, I’ll get to that, but Silcox was making a point and it dovetailed with Mayor Moncrief’s opening statement. “It’s all about quality of life,” the Mayor said.

On that point, the Mayor and I agree, it is all about quality of life. That is if you define “it” in the cosmic sense – like “What’s it all about, anyway?” or “Why is Fort Worth so awesome?”

Somehow, I don’t think of Mike Moncrief is that much of a unicorn hugger. I believe the “it” in this case is the revised gas drilling ordinance. And the ordinance should be all about quality of life. But walking out of City Hall yesterday, I had the feeling that it was more about something else — keeping up appearances. And I’m feeling queasy about how all this is looking for the future of our city.

But let’s get back to that house for a second. Good looking, huh? It’s right down the street from me. The folks who live there work in their yard all the time. But that little house is also an example of how urban gas drilling gas creates “quality of life issues.”

You see, getting gas out of the ground is only the first step. You still have to get that gas to market. And you do that by transmission pipeline.

Well, Chesapeake intends to get gas out of the ground at TCU. And if you thought I wasn’t crazy about the possibility of having a gas well about 1,000 feet from my daughter’s elementary school, I was even less crazy about what Silcox said yesterday about how Chesapeake plans to get that gas off of the TCU campus. Here’s a hint: it ain’t going be carried by the Tri-Delts in the back of a late model Range Rover or by Sam Baugh in an old GMC pickup.

It’s going by transmission pipeline down Alton Road where it will hang a left on South Hills Avenue, down to Carolyn Road and eventually hook up with a transmission line in the railroad easement along Granbury Road. That house is where the pipeline takes that hard right at Alton and South Hills. Seems they can bore straight lines, but making turns takes a whole lot of digging. See that really nice raised flowerbed? Gone. And the property owner can’t replace it.

That sound like “quality of life” to you? But wait … there’s more. That pipeline’s only a couple of blocks from my house. I guess Chesapeake can’t get enough of me. The good news is there is fire station between me and any potential blast.

Of course, I know that nothing ever goes wrong with gas transmission pipelines, but as I heard one gas drilling company executive say yesterday, the guys who dig up stuff around here kind of scare me. If a gas drilling exec is worried about it, then I’m freaking mortified.

Yep, Silcox put it best in his opening comment: we’ve all learned a lot about urban gas drilling. Yer goddam right about that, Chuck. And that’s why I’m skeptical about this whole deal.

I mean, Carter Burdette actually called for an environmental impact study?! A longtime oil and gas lawyer is suddenly concerned about the environment? When I saw him at the Trinity Trees public meeting last year, he was ready to hop on the bulldozer right there. What kind of bizarro place is this town turning into?

But Carter wasn’t the only one. Lots of people tried to say the right thing yesterday. Yeah, they are concerned about pipelines and high-impact waivers. If you look below, you can see a list of some of areas the task force will address. And it’s a long list. They are going to be busy.

But I’m more concerned with what’s not on that list – injection wells. This is the No. 1 gas drilling issue that Fort Worth faces, and how is it being addressed? An industry group.

Yeah, that’s right. The city referred the problem to the gas drilling industry to solve. They conducted a workshop of their own on Feb. 7 and they will make a presentation to the Council in March with their recommendations. After that, parameters will be set up for a pilot program and public education.

The Mayor says that he believes that the industry group – working in conjunction with the City Environmental Services Department – has “a handle on the situation.” He spoke of recycling and embracing new technology, but in the end, the Mayor sure made it sound like injection wells are coming to Fort Worth.

By the way, you’ll hear a lot of talk about air quality and gas drilling over the next few months. But it’s a red herring. There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about air quality in Fort Worth, but you will hear “air quality” used as justification for getting trucks of wastewater off the street. How do we do that? Injection wells, of course. Prevent poisoning of the air by poisoning the earth. How much sense does that make?

But the Mayor didn’t stop with injection wells – he named Bob Riley as the chair of the task force. Uh, Mr. Mayor … shouldn’t the task force get to select its own chair? So the first decision that the task forces makes is by the Mayor. Mayor Mikey … he’s The Decider.

Now, I don’t know much about Riley. Maybe he’s a great guy. But he was nominated by Danny Scarth, and the words “clean-burning natural gas” roll off Danny’s tongue as easily as Matt Kenseth thanking the good people at DeWalt Tools for their sponsorship of the No. 17 Ford. So I’m not thinking good things. I hope I’m wrong.

The guy who should have been the chair was Jim Bradbury, who was nominated by Joel Burns. I don’t know Jim personally, but those who do say he is a whip-smart lawyer and real no-bullshit guy who is more than capable of running that task force and keeping it focused. I do know he did some great work on the Trinity Trees issue. I think Joel made an excellent choice.

Gary Hogan, who was nominated by Silcox, is another excellent choice for the task force, as was Susan De Los Santos, who was nominated by Kathleen Hicks and also served on the 2006 task force. Of the rest of the committee, the only other person I know is Jim Beckman, the former District 9 City Council candidate. Great guy, but he was nominated by Carter Burdette and was encouraged to run for Council by Kay Granger. Oh, and his campaign was run by Bryan Eppstein. My hunch is that he’s going to be very pro-drilling. Please surprise me, Jim.

The rest of the citizens on the committee are unknown quantities to me, but I have to wonder if the citizens of Fort Worth really have a prayer of getting a gas drilling ordinance through that is in their best interest and protects their quality of life.

Because it’s all about the quality of life, right?

Meh … not really. It’s about keeping up appearances. That’s all the Mayor is really concerned with. The Mayor wants to project an image of consensus and unanimity in Fort Worth – lots of unanimous votes on the Council. And that’s what he wants here, the appearance of addressing a problem that more and more people become increasingly concerned with each day. I am very pessimistic about how much we can really expect out of this task force.

I’m not seeing a willingness to take on tough issues — like injection wells. There was nothing said about flaring, nothing about NORM. What I am seeing is an effort to smooth over some rough spots so Barnett Shale producers can get back to business as usual.

Somebody asked me yesterday if I had heard that former Fort Worth Mayor Ken Barr was working as a consultant for Chesapeake Energy. I hadn’t. But I am wondering how many other Fort Worth mayors are working for the gas industry.

The Issues
Some of the issues to be reviewed by the task force:

Pipelines: Mapping and reporting protected use locations, regulation of gathering lines not governed by federal or state regulations and notifying interested parties (like the T) about pipelines crossing city property.

Protected Use Definitions: Account for the Trinity Trails and public buildings.

Public notice: High impact permitting timeline to accommodate monthly informational meeting before a public hearing, new advertisement and notice language to prevent confusion.

Noise: New requirements for wells, fracing and compression stations.

Setback requirements: Limited to specific issues related to location of equipment for High Impact gas wells, schools and property lines.

Environmental impact: Standards around water sources and other sensitive areas and landscape buffers around wells.

Roads: Impacts to neighborhood circulation and roadway systems, control of traffic congestion and financial mechanisms to recover for street damage.

Enhanced Standards by Well Classification: For High Impact and Urban Wells.

Housekeeping revisions: Including a revising the definition of public park, adding definitions for tract of land and blanket wells, establishing a maximum time period to drill additional wells under a blanket permit, require a certified plat for all city departments, require staff approval of truck routes, add more information to newspaper notices.

Task Force members

Marty Craddock, Mayor

Wendy Vann Roach, District 2

Gary Hogan, District 3

Bob Riley, District 4 (chair)

Michael Bell, District 5

Clarence Wiesepape, District 6

Jim Beckman, District 7

Susan De Los Santos, District 8

Jim Bradbury, District 9

Devon Energy representative

Chesapeake Energy representative

Quicksilver representative

XTO representative

Greater FW Area of Realtors representative

Jim Schell, Land Use Attorney

Lee Nichol, James R. Harris and co

Rob Green, Walsh Ranch

Representatives from planning, engineering, architecture and construction management.

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