As 1st Municipal Fracking Ban In Texas Takes Effect, Towns Test State's Oil And Gas Supremacy

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

By EMILY SCHMALL | Associated Press | 4 hours, 14 minutes ago in Money, Politics, Science

RENO, Texas (AP) — A Texas hamlet shaken by its first recorded earthquake last year and hundreds since then is among communities now taking steps to challenge the oil and gas industry's traditional supremacy over the right to frack.

Reno Mayor Lyndamyrth Stokes said spooked residents started calling last November: "I heard a boom, then crack! The whole house shook. What was that?" one caller asked. The U.S. Geological Survey confirmed that Reno, a community about 50 miles west of Dallas, had its first earthquake.

Seismologists have looked into whether the tremors are being caused by disposal wells on the outskirts of Reno, where millions of gallons of water produced by hydraulic fracturing are injected every day. Reno took the first step toward what Stokes believes will be an outright ban by passing a law in April limiting disposal well activity to operators who can prove the injections won't cause earthquakes.

Reno and other cities are taking their lead from Denton, a university town north of Dallas where the state's first ban on fracking within city limits takes effect Tuesday. The Denton ban has become a "proxy for this big war between people who want to stop fracking and people who want to see it happen," said Michael Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

Read more: http://www.newser.com/article/886b112ee3fe45a496ef613d0884c432/as-1st-municipal-fracking-ban-in-texas-takes-effect-towns-test-states-oil-and-gas-supremacy.html

[pasto76]

1. longmont, colorado banned fracking. It was over turned in the courts

[sakabatou]

2. IMO, fracking should be banned nationwide

[cstanleytech]

4. While I agree the problem is small towns are trying to ban it when what it needs is a federal level

at the very least a state level laws to address it otherwise courts will probably keep throwing out such local city and even county bans.

[Agony]

7. the top NYS court upheld towns banning fracking...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/nyregion/towns-may-ban-fracking-new-york-state-high-court-rules.html?_r=0
New York Towns Can Prohibit Fracking, State’s Top Court Rules

banning it one town at a time is another way to skin the cat

[cstanleytech]

8. Ya but the question is if it goes to SCOTUS will they rule the same and considering

some of their recent rulings I am not going to hold my breath.

[sakabatou]

9. I won't hold my breath either.

[Deny and Shred]

3. Hoping for the best, but lots of luck

Getting Texas public servants to side against fracking money in favor of sound science sounds like pure folly.

The further along tax cuts deficits have gone, the more corporate lawyers outnumber public prosecutors. Toss in enough time to let fracking money trump outrage, and an energy industry-funded PR Jobs Creation campaign to soothe the opinion of the masses. These earthquakes will be simply a cost of doing business.

Does anyone really think public figures in Texas will stick their necks out so far as to let the energy lobby crush them?

[Le Taz Hot]

6. It's not just Texas.

Governor Brown of California has OK'd it for California -- very quietly, of course. California -- a state devastated by drought and occasional killer earthquakes now being fracked. What could possibly go wrong?

[CanonRay]

5. Could this be the crack that turns Texas blue?

I'll bet 80% of Reno (and Denton) votes Republican. The Dems should get behind this and support these towns.