Water, sand and chemicals deep underground
Measures to restrict hydraulic fracturing appeared on ballots in Texas, California and Ohio, with mixed results.
The city of Denton, Texas, became the first city in the Lone Star State to ban fracking, a method energy companies use to extract crude oil and natural gas involving the high pressure injection of millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals deep underground.
Denton is in the middle of the Barnett shale gas boom in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where fracking has been occurring in urban areas.
Just like bans voters passed in Colorado in recent years, the energy industry in generally fracking-friendly Texas is expected to mount a legal challenge to Denton’s ban.
Two of three proposed local fracking bans succeeded in California: one in San Benito County and another in Mendocino County. Voters in Santa Barbara County defeated an anti-fracking measure there.
At least four local anti-fracking measures appeared on ballots in Ohio, where the town of Athens became the fifth Ohio town to ban fracking in the form of a “community bill of rights” in which residents claim the right to clean air, water and a community free of fracking and wastewater injection wells.
Similar measures were defeated Tuesday in the Ohio towns of Gates Mills, Kent and Youngstown.