If you voted in any election in the last four years, chances are you received one of these in your mailbox on Saturday. On August 21, the Denton Chamber of Commerce Board approved a resolution opposing the upcoming ballot initiative aimed at banning fracking in the city limits of Denton. Relying on an inaccurate and intentionally misleading industry-funded economic impact study, the Chamber choose to submit itself to the desires of out-of-town oil and gas lobbyists. Their apparently unreflected upon position is now being used as a piece of political hackery, resulting in division among their own membership and the citizenry at large.
Even worse, the industry lobbyists who the Chamber has willingly submitted to are already amassing teams of lawyers to unleash lawsuit upon lawsuit should the city of Denton do anything – either in the ballot box or in the council chambers – that they find cutting into their bottom line. They’ve been explicit – they are ready to make an example of Denton, even if that means attempting economic decimation through endless lawsuits. If this were the movie Braveheart, the industry is King Longshanks, the Denton citizens are the Scottish people, and it appears the Chamber is starting to resemble the Scottish nobility.
Despite the Chamber’s sudden interest in “responsible drilling” and the pursuit of “reasonable regulation,” I’ve never seen even one policy recommendation coming from this body during the 5 or so years our community has struggled with this issue. As I said in an open letter to the Chair of the Railroad Commissioner when he penned a letter of similar content to the Denton City Council, where have you been?
We are in need of solutions to very real problems.
Let’s make this very simple: the current legal, regulatory, and statutory situation allows for, and has resulted in, wells being drilled within 200 feet of existing neighborhoods. Is this an example of responsible drilling? If not, what are your specific policy or legal suggestions to fix this problem?
Despite numerous offers of help and claims that this can be fixed through “reasonable regulation” by industry, state, and local leaders, we have yet to see anyone coming to the table with a solution. It should be of no surprise that there is growing frustration among our citizenry. Without solutions, people who might have been advocates of the natural gas revolution two years ago now have good reasons to think their neighborhood could be the next to turn into an industrial drilling field.
Perhaps the biggest tragedy to all of this is the colossal waste of time, energy, and money the Chamber is spending on this effort to defend an industry that has virtually no economic impact on our city. Meanwhile, the people of our city are ushering in an entrepreneurial renaissance, a tech boom, and an explosion in social enterprise. Why aren’t we spending time nurturing these and moving our economy into the 21st century? Furthermore, our city has significant economic issues to address. 45% of our city’s kids need economic assistance to pay for lunch at school. 51% of our city’s single moms are below the poverty line. Our median household income is the lowest in the county and below the state average. Food stamp recipients have doubled in our city since 2007. What if our business leaders spent their time launching initiatives to tackle these problems instead of protecting the economic interests of the elite few among them?
Because of all this, I have written the Chamber asking that they remove me and my company from their membership roll. I continue to be ready and willing to work with anyone on either side of this debate to find meaningful and productive solutions, but I can’t lend financial support to the political hackery of an industry intent on harming my city.