Cedar Hill says no to Chesapeake gas drilling

by Steve Snyder of TODAY Newspapers

Residents of Cedar Hill's Promontory neighborhood and nearby areas turned out in force at the Cedar Hill Planning and Zoning Commission meeting Jan. 6.

Their concern?

Chesapeake Energy and its request to rezone three parcels of land to commercial zoning to allow exploratory natural gas drilling. The city does not currently allow drilling in residential areas, which is how the three sites are zoned.

And their voices were heard.

Former Promontory Homeowners Association President Billie Ballengee said she and others were worried Chesapeake could destroy what she called “the best viewpoint in Texas.”

From the back yard of her residence, overlooking almost all of Joe Pool Lake, from an escarpment height that allows downtown Fort Worth to be clearly seen on the western skyline as the sun sets, it would be hard to argue with her characterization.

“I object to both” drilling and commercial zoning, Ballengee said. She noted that, if Chesapeake wound up not drilling there, or finding results that didn't warrant going beyond exploratory drilling, the sites, existing in that western viewpoint on the east side of the lake, would still have commercial zoning.

The Planning and Zoning Commission, perhaps with some of the same concerns, voted down Chesapeake's rezoning requests.

Ballengee noted that Chesapeake had given limited bonuses and royalty percentages to landowners from whom it acquired early lease assignments a few years ago. But, as gas prices ramped up in 2007 and the first half of 2008, those lease prices went up, from perhaps $100-$200 plus 1/16th or so on a royalty percentage to paying several thousand dollars of bonus and royalties of one-eighth or more.

So, she said that if Chesapeake has leases in Cedar Hill that are about to expire, then residents ought to consider the zoning defeat a good thing, in that, if there is gas under their property, Chesapeake or other drillers will come back with higher lease payments.

She had one other comment about this as well.

“What gets me about Chesapeake is that they claim they have contractual obligations,” she said.

The Cedar Hill City Council held a discussion session in October about revising its drilling regulations. The relevant current ordinance, adopted in 1984, allows oil and gas drilling only in property districts zoned C - Commercial, I - Industrial or IP - Industrial Park and also prohibits drilling sites on any property zoned for residential use or within 500 feet of any residential or multi-family structure in any zone.

Prompted by Chesapeake, in part, and based on Chesapeake's dealings with cities further to the west in the Barnett Shale natural gas field, such as Mansfield, Burleson and Fort Worth, the council discussed revising its standards. Chesapeake looked at ordinances in Mansfield, Southlake, Burleson, Llano and Fort Worth, saw what it best liked and submitted two proposals for Cedar Hill to draft a similar ordinance.

At the October meeting, the council agreed to appoint residents to a committee to study possible ordinance changes. Other than that, the council has taken no action since the October meeting. And, according to Corky Brown, the city's director of public relations, no action is scheduled for any council meeting in the near future.

While realizing it would be legally near-impossible, Ballengee said she wished the city would adopt a new ordinance that required gas companies to drill first in an area that won't be used for much of anything else - the iconic radio/TV tower hill. She wondered aloud if the council could put an incentive system in any new ordinance to steer drillers toward less sensitive areas.

Chesapeake staff was contacted for more information about their company's zoning change request, leases the company had in the area and expiration dates, and offered the ability to contact, and had not responded by the afternoon of Jan. 12.

Zoning changes the Planning and Zoning Commission approved were on the Cedar Hill City Council's Jan. 13 agenda; the rejected Chesapeake items were not.