Weekly Praise

If you haven't read the FW Weekly yet, do so. Now.

You can't afford not to.

When the Fort Worth City Council last month granted a variance to Chesapeake Energy allowing it to drill gas wells that will be closer to homes and parkland than city ordinance generally allows, it didn't seem like that big of a change. After all, since 2008 the council has granted almost every exception to the setback rules requested by the drilling industry. But for critics of Fort Worth's approach to gas drilling regulation, the variance - for a multiple-well site just west of downtown and near the condos and townhomes of the So7 development - marked a new and troubling weakening of protections for citizens.

Alice Cranz, whose home is less than 300 feet from where Chesapeake now has permission to drill, said she can't believe "that the city council ignores their own rules. They've never met a well they didn't want and don't care whose property it ruins."

Hogan pointed out that the wells planned for the site represent a lot of money for the city and Fort Worth school district. "You've got to remember that two of the largest mineral owners for that site are the Fort Worth ISD and the City of Fort Worth," he said. "So in this case the city was looking out for its own pockets and said the heck with the homeowners."