Texas Municipal Frack Reparations House Bill 539

A Texas Legislator, on behalf of the oil and gas lobby, has

introduced a bill whereby any municipality that uses its
zoning laws to regulate where an oil or gas well can or
cannot be drilled will be required to come up with an
estimate of the lost income from such prohibited nonexistent wells, including royalties, etc.
The cities are required to estimate the Fracking
Reparations on wells that were prohibited in order to
protect the citizens. Here is a copy of HB 539.
Apart from being a capriciously unconstitutional burden on
municipalities, it is economically ridiculous since it
requires a government entity, ie. a city staffer to speculate
on the profitability of an oil or gas well that not only has not
been drilled, but cannot be drilled. If they cannot come up
with an estimate, the state will come up with one for them
taking guestimates from any source, or in the bills
language any person . . or organization meaning a
fracker.
Such as the fracker that could not drill the well in the
first place next to the nursing home, daycare center,
school or hospital per the local land use law. Just
imagine what a gusher it would have been. Every one
of them.
Guess who wrote the Fracking Reparations Bill :
A look at Kings list of contributing Political Action
Committees provided by the Texas Ethics Commission will
show just how concerning the bill appears. In the
finance report filed 30 days priorto the 2014 midterm
elections, King reported donations from Atmos Energy
Corporation PAC, Exxon Mobil PAC, Marathon Oil Company
PAC, Koch Industries, Inc. PAC and BP North America
Employees PAC. In the latest report, filed Jan. 15, King

added Devon Energy Corporation PAC to the list of energy

PACs contributing to his politics. http://ntdaily.com/rejectrep-phil-kings-house-bill-539/
Welcome to Texas, where all the undrilled wells are above
average. This bill is indicative of the contempt the oil and
gas industry has for municipal zoning laws and the people
they protect, the people of Texas. The state has no land use
protections, no setback rules and regulations for oil and gas
wells only the municipalities regulate that. Only
municipalities protect Texans from the encroachment
of oil and gas industrialization.
Yet another bill has been introduced to disarm
municipalities of their time-honored ability to set limits on
oil and gas drilling within their boundaries. In Texas, the
state regulates how oil and gas wells are drilled, and
municipalities regulated where they can be drilled or not
drilled. There are no state regulated standards for well pad
set backs from schools, hospitals, restaurants, apartments,
houses or water wells. Only the cities regulate that.
The assumption of these frack anywhere bills is that the
state ie. a bureaucrat in Austin knows best as to how far
a well pad should be from a daycare center when the state
has no such rules and regulations for well pad setbacks.
So the premise behind the bills is that the state will know
where to locate wells in incorporated cities when it has
never attempted to do so in un-incorporated areas, or
anywhere else. In other words, trust the Railroad
Commission to do what it has never done before: Regulate
wells in the context of local land use.
I think not. If a city cannot limit where oil and gas wells are
drilled, its zoning codes are meaningless. The frackers can
frack anywhere, because land use laws setback ordinances
and zoning districts are by definition, a limitation of defined
activities.

In other states, the state regulates how wells are drilled, the
municipalities regulate where. That is how state preemption
laws have been written and interpreted by the supreme
courts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York. State oil and
gas regulators have the exclusive authority to regulate how
a well is drilled but not where it is drilled - they cannot
trump local land use laws.
If a state agency can trump local land use laws then
the state agency would have to have a complete set of
rules and regulations relating to well setbacks from
water sources, housing, commercial, retail and
agricultural uses. The Railroad Commission has no
such rules and regulations.
The latest of these frack anywhere bills has been
introduced by State Rep. Drew Darby (R-San Angelo),
Chairman of the Texas House Energy Resources Committee,
filed House Bill 40 (HB40), which seeks to amend Chapter
81 of the Texas Natural Resources Code and expressly
preempts the authority of a municipality or other political
subdivision to regulate an oil and gas operation and
gives exclusive jurisdiction to regulate an oil and gas
operation to the state of Texas, specifically the Railroad
Commission.
Under the terms of HB40, a municipality or other political
subdivision would not be able to enforce an ordinance or
other measure, or an amendment or revision of an existing
ordinance or other measure, that bans, limits, or otherwise
regulates an oil and gas operation within its boundaries or
extraterritorial jurisdiction.
As written, that means frack anywhere. Because the
Railroad Commission has no rules and regulations
pertaining to well pad setbacks from elementary schools,
churches, hospitals, daycare centers or single family
housing. Such a law would be willfully contemptuous of the

municipalities right to determine land uses, and in so

doing, contemptuous of the health, safety and welfare of the
people of Texas.