A woman who lives on the east side of Fort Worth came home to find a gas driller’s sign stuck in her yard without her permission, smack dab beside her “Just Say No To Urban Gas Drilling” sign.
She wasn’t happy. I’ll let her tell her own story…here’s what she said:
“We’re the only house on the long block of our street that still has a Just Say NO sign in the yard – although two neighbors to the south of us have signs on their porches. There are nearly 50 houses on our block and we know that many of our neighbors signed away rights to their minerals during the frenzy of the first ‘highest signing bonus’ at $26k per acre.
“Needless to say, we were not among the many who were silly-beside-themselves to sign a $500 dollar check nor a $15,000.00 check. We still firmly believe that drilling inside a city is a sad mistake, one made far too hurriedly with not much protection for future corrections. We spent many an evening in meetings across the city listening to the industry (by way of young PR reps with no real-world experience) quote from scripts the half truths and outright misrepresentations of what neighbors could expect, as well as many city council meetings debating the merits of an ordinance with little tooth for protecting anyone – particularly vulnerable low-income neighborhoods, those who rent property in the city and the way-too-busy-to-get-educated about a ruthless industrial business.
“Placing a sign in our yard is representative of the quality of the folks that work to drill the city’s its ‘abundance’ of natural gas: spiteful, silly and just plain mean. Though there were many yards available with homeowners at home to give permission, Gateway Permit Services, by way of Dawson Geophysical company by way of Chesapeake Energy, made the decision to place a sign in the easement of our property. There’s little class in that kind of decision making.
“Our neighborhood, like many others across town, is strung up with black and yellow wires crisscrossing streets and intersections and you can feel the apprehension in the air. We believe that now many are worried about the growing number of pad sites across town, air quality reports hung up in limbo and coming water restrictions that won’t affect gas companies. And there’s lot more required infrastructure to worry about, coming soon. But let’s all worry about that later.
“To give credit where it’s due, Anthony, the Gateway project manager removed the sign promptly at our request. He was polite and apologetic – Gateway was supposed to garner our permission to plant the sign, he said. We realize that he’s only doing a job and were polite in return. We gave him the benefit of our side of the story and explained why we have a JUST SAY NO sign in our yard after all these years. And before he left, we wished him a good future career, hopefully in another industry that doesn’t prey on folks looking for ‘free’ money.”
We may as well get used to it. In Texas polluters have political backing and we home owners are permitted to live in the homes we bought until some corporation decides we’re in the way. The prevailing attitude is if you don’t like it, leave.