Denton Residents Get Ready For Fracking Legal Battles
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DENTON (CBSDFW.COM) - Randy Sorrells drives his four wheel ATV across the Denton pasture where his horses and cattle were grazing.
"There's the first gas well ever drilled out here," he says pointing at a cluster of red, metal pipes and valves behind a chain link fence.
Sorrells says he has five gas wells on his 100 acre property and has never had any problems because of them. "We got multiple animals out here, horses and cows and chickens. No one has ever been sick. The water is good."
The problem Sorrels does have with his gas wells is they're in the Denton city limits. It will soon be illegal to frack and expand the wells.
"We're scheduled for a redrill and to go horizontal," Sorrells says. "Our production could be as high as, when it first comes online, as $1000 an acre."
"We have a right to clean air and clean water health and safety," says Carol Soph with the group Frack Free Denton, which pushed for the ban.
While Denton readies for the legal battles, The Frack Free Denton plans to keep their issue in the limelight.
"We have to keep the citizens of Denton informed about what's going on," Soph says. "We have to be involved in the city and make sure that you're keeping us advised so communications stay open."
And Sorrells says he's ready to join lawsuits to fight the ban that he says are denying him his mineral rights.
"So, this issue is not over. Is definitely going to be a long, lengthy expensive court battle," Sorrells says.
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