North Texas Daily

Paul Wedding / Intern

The Denton Chamber of Commerce has advised its members and employees to vote against the proposed fracking ban in the city’s Nov. 4 general election.

The chamber believes banning fracking in Denton would be bad for the city’s revenue, as well as the revenue of UNT and the Denton Independent School District. Due to more than 10,000 acres being invested in by drilling companies, which constitutes nearly 30 percent of Denton’s land, it would be a difficult process to stop fracking.

Some students at UNT are opposed to fracking and support the proposed ban.

“I will definitely be voting for the ban on fracking because it is detrimental to the environment and its inhabitants,” integrated studies sophomore Sarah Brown said.

Instead of a ban, the Chamber would prefer to have regulation over the well sites in order to make sure the rules on drilling are expressed fairly.

Philosophy professor Adam Briggle, who put the fracking ban together, believes that regulation is no longer a viable option for Denton.

“We discovered that any responsible regulations made is just closing the barn doors after the cows already got out, because the fracking investors follow other rules,” he said. “As soon as a project is permitted, it is to follow the rules at that time. Even when you put a new well onto an existing site, it’s not considered new because it’s an already plotted area.”

Chamber of Commerce President Chuck Carpenter said he did not have any specifics on the kind of regulation they would want over the drill sites in mind.

“It’s more of a philosophical opposition to the ban,” he said. “We think there needs to be room for compromise.”

Briggle disagreed.

“We worked on a compromise for three years,” Briggle said. “It’s the industry that refused to compromise, and it’s the biased state laws that didn’t require them to compromise. Either the chamber doesn’t understand the history, or they are trying to mollify the voters.”

Featured Illustration by Jake Bowerman – Senior Illustrator