Texas towns challenge oil and gas industry on fracking

RENO, Texas - A Texas hamlet shaken by its first recorded earthquake last year and hundreds since then is among communities now taking steps to challenge the oil and gas industry's traditional supremacy over the right to frack.

Lyndamyrth Stokes, the mayor of Reno, Texas, said spooked residents started calling last November: "I heard a boom, then crack! The whole house shook. What was that?" one caller asked. The U.S. Geological Survey confirmed that the community about 50 miles west of Dallas had had its first earthquake.

Seismologists have looked into whether the tremors are being caused by disposal wells on the outskirts of the town, where millions of gallons of water produced by hydraulic fracturing are injected every day. Reno took the first step toward what Stokes believes will be an outright ban by passing a law in April limiting disposal well activity to operators who can prove the injections won't cause earthquakes.

Reno and other cities are taking their lead from Denton, a town north of Dallas where the state's first ban on fracking within city limits takes effect Tuesday. The Denton ban has become become a referendum on Texas cities' rights to halt drilling.

Property rights are a part of Texas' cultural fabric, but the desire to develop hydrocarbons is strong in a state that leads the nation in oil and gas development. Furthermore, under state law, property rights are separate from mineral rights, making it possible to own one but not the other.

Cities in other states have tried to stop fracking, with varying success. Courts in Pennsylvania and New York have ruled in favor of allowing cities some control over drilling. But in Colorado, courts ruled against one city's attempted ban.

In Texas, the fight pits municipalities against the Texas Railroad Commission, which governs the oil and gas industry, and the equally powerful General Land Office, now headed by George P. Bush, a grandson and nephew of two former presidents. The land office has joined an industry group seeking an injunction to stop the fracking ban from taking effect.

A land office spokesman declined requests for an interview.