{"id":30917,"date":"2013-08-29T12:07:08","date_gmt":"2013-08-29T17:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=30917"},"modified":"2013-08-29T12:11:09","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T17:11:09","slug":"dallas-city-council-denies-permits-for-fracking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2013\/08\/29\/dallas-city-council-denies-permits-for-fracking\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas City Council Denies Permits for Fracking"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A

Photo by KUT News<\/p>

<\/p><\/div>\n

It took years to reach a final decision, but on Wednesday the Dallas City Council denied several permits for a company hoping to drill within city limits. The company, Trinity East, had applied to drill and use hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking<\/a>,” at several wells on city land, including a golf course.<\/p>\n

While the permits were denied, the story isn’t over. As reporter BJ Austin\u00a0at KERA Dallas notes<\/a>, the city has already taken money from Trinity East, and could be on the hook since the permits were denied:<\/p>\n

[Council member Philip]\u00a0Kingston and five other council members voted no \u2013 denying the required 12 votes to approve the drilling. Mayor Mike Rawlings announced that he is personally is against gas drilling in Dallas.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo paraphrase Ecclesiastes there is a place for everything under heaven and I don\u2019t think that place for gas drilling is Dallas,\u201d Rawlings explained.<\/p>\n

But he voted to approve the permits. Rawlings warned that city would likely be sued for millions of dollars if the permits were denied. Trinity East paid the city $19 million in 2008 for the right to drill. And the mayor argued that the company probably wouldn\u2019t drill anyway because of low natural gas prices, and without drilling the lease expires in February.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Texas Observer<\/em> looks at why the drilling plans were so controversial<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The permits were especially controversial because they would have allowed drilling on city-owned parkland in the floodplain \u2013 two places where drilling is currently banned. Things really came to a head when it came to light that City Manager Mary Suhm had struck a\u00a0secret side-deal<\/a>\u00a0with the company, promising Trinity East that it would be able to drill while telling City Council the opposite.<\/p>\n

Much like\u00a0they\u2019ve done in the past<\/a>, Trinity East representatives and other fracking supporters basically implied that all the people who testified against the permits were delusional, emotional children who didn\u2019t have the capacity to comprehend science. One fracking proponent very sarcastically said, \u201cGod bless their souls\u2014they\u2019re trying to do the right thing and save the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councilman Philip Kingston objected to the implication that drilling opponents were fact-free and emotional.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve done a year\u2019s worth of research on this, I\u2019ve visited drill sites,\u201d Kingston said. \u201cI\u2019ll be opposing his motion [to approve the permits] out of rational thought,\u201d he added to applause from the audience.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Trinity East drilling permits denied this week were but one facet in a larger issue facing Dallas: How to regulate drilling and fracking<\/a> within city limits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took years to reach a final decision, but on Wednesday the Dallas City Council denied several permits for a company hoping to drill within city limits. The company, Trinity East, had applied to drill and use hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” at several wells on city land, including a golf course. While the permits were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[59],"tags":[12,15,22],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30917"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30922,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30917\/revisions\/30922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}