Fracking: Banned in Dalas?

You probably should read the news instead of the blogs to see what this really was about.

Another Victory for Fracking Opponents in Dallas | The Texas Observer

That seems pretty common sense in a pro-fracking state. Why would you frack by schools and churches, that seems like just common sense? You can't even smoke a cigarrette or open a bar by these places, why should you be able to frack. For homes, I think if the home owner agrees but these homeowners were not happy. What did the dallas city council do?

That's pretty bad, selling city parks to exploration companies. The change in law is a clear victory for responsable fracking. With the vast tracts of the eagleford why would you frack by dallas schools?

Not fracking in high population centers is simply common sense. When there is so much natural gas in the eagleford why would you frack within dallas city limits? You can still frack in most of the metroplex with fracking legal in fort worth and the other areas. It would be good to enforce the 1500' rule (except in cases where home owners waved or sold their rights) in the whole state. The dallas fort worth metroplex is the only high population center on a major shale resource though, so simply adding this common sense law to the rest of the metroplex would be a good start.

 

I wouldn't put an oil refinery or a coal mine down town either. Nor would you put a factory farm. Hell they even are closing down the hot sauce maker in Irwindale, California because of the smell of the peppers and garlic. You can't tell me that we shouldn't have zoning. You can't put up a wind turbine in the city of dallas why should you be able to frack.

You dig big holes things can go wrong. If you say you can't dig big holes anywhere for natural gas, but you can do mountain top removal for coal, then you end up shutting down the natural gas and building more coal. With all the incentives for solar and all the money in california, and all the regulations against coal, california power is still 4x more coal than solar. You make natural gas impossible to develop, no matter how safe, and You will be importing much more coal electricity in california. I know the poliiticians will label it something else, but it will be coal electricity you will have other states producing to satsify the demand.

Those factory farms with the cattle are often much more toxic than fracking. Again you need smart regulation.

There is nothing NIMBI about it. There is plenty of natural gas on the other parts of the bakkan shale and in the eagleford. If an accident happens there very few people get affected. Water can get trucked in for a few people. Some dallas city council member was trying to sell a city park to the frackers, how many people do you think would be affected. How would you truck in water if you bust the main pipes to one of the biggest cities in the country. We don't have porn by schools, or smoking, nor drug dealers, but we do away from schools. Think a little.

Fracking is the cheapest cleanest method.
1) New england imports oil from the middle east then burns it in oil heaters. It gets expensive so their are actually still subsidies for oil heat, paid for by my incometaxes. The pollution is much higher than fracked natural gas, and yes accidents and wars happen with oil. Sollution fracking and natural gas pipelines, is finally eliminating some of this oil heat.

2) Mountain top removal of coal destroys entire ecosystems, yet many have coal based electrical heat. Fracking has slowed the process where states may eventually make this

Instead of sensible laws to make fracking safer, the oponents are really encouraging the idea that we should go back to burning more coal and oil. Natural gas ccgt works well with renewables but not with coal.

Cheaper natural gas has brought back some of our energy intense industries from overseas, and made them less toxic.

 

Just a few tidbits about congress's misunderstanding of fracking and how its mytholgy is spread to create FUD. Why do congress critters lie and create FUD? I don't know, they just do.
Fracking and US Legislation | The Energy Collective

We do have some doubts on the water issue, although no one blamed fracking for methane in their water in pennsylvania before even though.

we should have enough doubt not to do it by a large population center, and should have testing before during and after fracking, to confirm.
Pennsylvania Fracking Can Put Water at Risk, Duke Study Finds - Bloomberg

The duke study seemed to say that fracking isn't likely to add methane to water where it's not naturally occuring, if it is naturally occuring it may make it worse. Many people are exposed to unsafe drinking water, and perhaps more testing and mitigation should be around, now that tests are cheaper and easier than than they were 40 years ago.

We know the health risks of grandfathered coal plants, but the congress have decided that is just fine, even though these health risks are much much much greater than fracking. The excuse for keeping these grandfathered seems to come down to "its in the clean air act" or "even though we thought they would close in the '80s, and we were wrong, they must be closing soon". The real reason is utilitiy lobbists, but these utilities are not making as much money off their pollution now that fracking is reducing the cost of cleaner natural gas electricity generation.