Local history buffs have been concerned about some of the older buildings on East Hickory Street since Denton code enforcement opened a dangerous building case at 211 E. Hickory Street.

This week, I worked on a story about all the Hickory Street code enforcement happenings. It’s scheduled to run in Sunday’s paper.

Someone complained to code enforcement about 211 E. Hickory St. late last year and the  department opened up the case. Today, they provided the City Council with the following report: 2013-055 – 211 E Hickory Update Informal Staff Report

The 1920s era building needs a new roof. Photos in the report show daylight shining through the ceiling and the air conditioner dangling from the rafters.

The building is next door to Travelstead. There had been some confusion in the community about a potential threat to Travelstead. It’s owned by Rob Storrie and he recently moved out and is having some roof work done, too.

But code enforcement reassured that they aren’t working any cases on the Travelstead building.

The Travelstead building has a rich history and a bit of a following among antique car collectors. Here’s a little bit about that, too, most of which I wasn’t able to fit into the story.

I also spent time with Jimmy Normile, who has decided to sell his 1936-era building, after code enforcement came calling this week. Tim Beatty was there, as was an auctioneer, to talk business. Jimmy says he’ll sell and he will likely sign with the auctioneer to move his inventory, which catered to owners of older cars, too. Some DIYers knew that if you needed a part for your jalopy, you could check with Jimmy before heading to the junkyard.

It was kind of amazing to me how fast word spread when Jimmy decided to sell. But, I think Jimmy knew that potential was there, too. He complained about how much his values — and thus his taxes — had gone up in the past few years.

And it wasn’t like he didn’t know he was on code enforcement’s radar. He pulled out a stack of certified letters from the city to show them to me.

They were all unopened.

Denton ISD’s student mariachi, Dorado, raised $3,000 during a fundraiser May 18 at Calhoun Middle School.

The Denton ISD school board had approved an after-school mariachi program and the group met for the first time in January 2012. Miguel Cantu is serving as the part-time director of the program, which has one ensemble with 13 students from Denton ISD middle schools and high schools. Here they are in performance:

We received this appeal from Heather Walker about Brian Peyton this morning and are passing it on:

This is regarding The Brian Peyton Fund, or rather, Brian Peyton, who very much loves Denton, Texas, beer, playing guitar and hanging out with his friends. He was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor in April 2012. He went through chemo and radiation. Things had been going pretty well until very recently. Unfortunately, the tumor is back. This is not good news. We need help and we need it fast. 

…

Please go to this site and donate some money if you have it, even the smallest amount helps. If you can’t donate money, leave some love on the comment page. Or buy a cool brain t-shirt. Or two! 

It would mean the world to a lot of people if you can help out now. Spread some love.

http://brianpeytonfund.theneener.net/

Thanks, y’all. Be healthy, happy, and peaceful!

We received a press release from the Denton Animal Shelter Foundation yesterday, following our story about UNT student interest in the new building.

The foundation counted up all the adoptions it has underwritten since the beginning of the year (yes, this is after the Rachael Ray challenge) and that came to about $59,500 to help save 735 animals.

The foundation credits the adoption subsidies for helping people adopt pets at reduced rates, and likely saving many more animals than would otherwise have been possible. The foundation has committed to subsidizing adoptions, which costs on average about $80 per animal, two days per week because the shelter is often over-crowded.

“The shelter received a large number of abandoned and surrendered pets at an already full shelter during the last week of April,” according to the press release. In other words, the foundation owes another $5,800 to the city just for the first few days of May.

Foundation officials are concerned whether they can maintain the fundraising pace until the new shelter is opened in summer 2014, since the adoption subsidy fund is almost depleted.

To make a tax-deductible donation, or for more information, contact DASF, PO Box 486, Denton 76202 or www.dentonasf.com and Facebook.com/DentonASF.

The city of Denton released additional information this afternoon related to the April 19 incident at an Eagleridge Operating gas well site on the city’s west side.

Earlier in the day, the city sent out a press release acknowledging the incident as a blowout, one of the most serious problems encountered in the field. Essentially, operators no longer have control of the well. Early in the Barnett Shale boom, a blowout in Palo Pinto County in December 2005 ignited, blowing a 750-crater in the ground and burning for several days.

The city’s link to the Texas Railroad Commission’s initial report of the blowout in Denton shows that a flash fire was a risk until the operator got extra water to the site.

We had reported that the Denton fire department evacuated homes in the area.

It could be that the city released additional information today after an internal email was leaked to Brendan Carroll, one of two candidates challenging Jim Engelbrecht in District 3, and he posted the email on his Facebook page yesterday.

During the final campaign forum hosted by the League of Women Voters on April 18, Engelbrecht responded to residents upset by the incident and the lack of information coming from the city. (There had been no statement from Eagleridge. We blogged what we could here and here - the second link includes video of the incident).

I tweeted from the April 25 forum that Engelbrecht told the crowd he expected more of a report from the city either Friday or Monday. On Friday, April 26, the city posted a press release that had been circulated among the media earlier in the week. It contained no new information.

This latest information from the city shows that more reports are coming, though our link back to the original TCEQ report on emissions shows the operator has changed the estimates. Frankly, I didn’t make a screen capture of that page because I didn’t think TCEQ would over-write it. But Cathy Mcmullen, a member of the Denton Stakeholders Drilling Advisory Group did: TCEQ initial report.

We’ve reported on the American Lung Association’s grades for Texas air quality before. It’s a nice tool that takes lots of data gathered under the Clean Air Act and makes it accessible.

The American Lung Association released the latest report card this week and, once again, Denton County got an F. In fact, 15 Texas counties got failing grades this year.

Four Texas metropolitan areas were labeled among the nation’s 25 most polluted cities. Only California had more.

Despite some improvements in local air quality about 10 years ago, progress has stalled. Many residents are concerned that the Barnett Shale boom — now aging, with many older well sites being equipped with compressors — is contributing to the problem.

Rural counties that have oil and gas pollution, with few other sources, have received failing grades this year, too, including Sublette County, Wyo.

UPDATE: The city has identified the well site with a press release this morning, as the Smith Yorlum #7. A blog post by TexasSharon links to the latest permits with the Texas Railroad Commission, which shows Star of Texas was the original operator of the well. 

Pam Brewer, one of the residents near the Bradford Eagleridge well site along Jim Christal Road in western Denton on Friday, disputes the report that the “emissions event” began at 8 a.m.

Brewer says the noise woke her up about 3 a.m. At about 6:30 a.m., when there was enough light for her to get some video, as she got ready for work, she shot this:

Apr 19, 2013 (1)

“Unbeknownst to me, this was not supposed to be happening,” Brewer said.

She said she was even more upset when she left for work and drove by the crew, sitting in their pickups. They had left the pad site and were watching the geyser of gas and fluids from a safe distance. She had left her daughter and newborn grandchild behind, only to learn later that the fire department came, banging on the door and telling them to leave.

“They told her not to turn on the lights or anything, just grab her purse and go,” Brewer said. “My daughter was so upset that she forgot to buckle the baby’s carrier into the cart seat.”

Her husband tried to go back home, but the fire department wouldn’t let him pass, Brewer said. Instead, he stayed there with the fire department all day.

She said she didn’t know enough about drilling and production processes to understand what she saw at the pad site in the days and weeks before the failure to be specific. But, it had been busy for weeks with bright lights and rigs going in and out.

“Sometimes it would be a city of trailers and then the people would all leave, and then later they would all come back,” Brewer said. “There was always a lot of activity.”

In other words, activity that sounds consistent with a new frack job. The well site was originally permitted in 2003 with another operator, Wolsey Well Service. Eagleridge Operating is the newest operator at the site, and city records show it submitted a new permit for that site in 2010.

During Denton’s years-long battle to update its ordinance governing natural gas drilling and production in the city limits, Eagleridge claimed vested rights on its permits, which we reported last year. (Here’s the last from that chain of stories.)

I recently made an open records request seeking information on whether any other operators might try to do the same — pursue their currents interests in wells or permits under the old rules — and found that Devon Energy also rattled those “vested rights” chains with the city.

Inside the city limits, Eagleridge Operating has 54 wells, and Devon has 69 wells, according to the city’s database.

Outside the city limits in the extra-territorial jurisdiction, where the new ordinance has some teeth but not as much as inside the city, Eagleridge has 8 wells and Devon has 90.

Brewer said she finds the permitting and setback process maddening, given how much trouble the city gave her family when they first moved to the neighborhood, which is zoned industrial, and wanted to build a pig barn so that her daughter could raise and show hogs for FFA.

“They told me I couldn’t have animals within 1,000 feet of houses,” Brewer said. “But now there’s a rig within 1,000 feet of houses out here.”

Furthermore, her neighbor leased land for the gas pipeline that runs close to her house and, she said, “nobody asked me how I felt about it.”

Now that she knows what happened Friday wasn’t normal, she isn’t going to wait to call the fire department, she said.

A “emissions event” report to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality attempts to count the hazardous air pollutants emitted with the gas well leak Friday on Jim Christal Road.

Some of the information is consistent with what nearby residents told an NT Daily reporter — that the incident began for them about 3 a.m. Friday. Workers at the rig started having trouble at 1:30 a.m., according to the report. They realized by 8 a.m. that they had lost control of the well and evacuated the pad site. The company called the Texas Railroad Commission an hour or so later.

According to our story, the city got its first call about 11 a.m. The language of the operator’s role in helping residents of a nearby home is unclear, but city officials reported ordering the evacuation of four homes nearby.

The operator called for well control specialists and, according to the report, the well was capped and the valve shut at 3:39 p.m.

The “emissions event” was said to last for 7 hours and 39 minutes, which would start the clock on calculating what leaked at 8 a.m. The emissions are estimated based on a 500 MCF flow rate from the well and a gas sample from a nearby well, according to the report.

A number of hazardous air pollutants were estimated being emitted, including 59.61 pounds of benzene and 404.3 pounds of xylenes. The report narrative claimed to have also estimated the emissions of toluene and ethylbenzene, but no figures were published by TCEQ.

Benzene is a known human carcinogen. Xylene can affect the nervous system.

According to the city’s statement about the leak, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality took air samples when the well was leaking, but whether those would conflict or verify the estimated emissions is unclear. According to the National Weather Service, peak wind gusts reached 24 mph Friday.

It’s also unclear is whether the emissions would trigger any enforcement action by the TCEQ. According to the report, under normal operations, the well site is allowed to emit 10 tons per year each of benzene and xylene and 25 tons per year of butanes, pentanes and propanes.

UPDATE: Adam Briggle blogs about the accident from the community’s perspective.

About 70 members of the gay community and their supporters packed the council chambers Tuesday night to ask for a similar resolution denouncing the Defense of Marriage Act and the Texas Constitutional Marriage Amendment that the city of Austin passed late last year.

Austin’s same-sex marriage rights resolution

Advocate Tyler Carlton presented the City Council with a petition requesting the resolution, which asks that same-sex partners receive the same benefits afforded to married, heterosexual partners.

The Dallas Voice, which calls itself the premier media source for the LGBT community, was there Tuesday to document the event, which included many residents lining the hallway as the council left the work session room and moved into the chambers.

Nearly everyone in the audience stood in solidarity as both Carlton and Kat Ralph, of Keep Denton Queer, spoke during the citizen’s reports of the meeting.

Carlton said they had support for the resolution from all the candidates for Denton City Council, including Al Sanchez, Brendan Carroll, Griffen Rice, Joey Hawkins, Phil Kregel and Denton ISD candidate, Prudence Sanchez.

In an interview Wednesday, Carlton said they didn’t ask the incumbents for their support, although he had exchanged emails about the issue with District 2 City Council member Dalton Gregory.

A Dallas City Council member, Scott Griggs, has been working to get a resolution through Dallas, too. His efforts got tied in with the gas drilling controversy in Dallas in an odd way. Read more here and here.

At the end of the council meeting, when council members typically ask for new items for the agenda, no one asked for the resolution to be put on the agenda. However, Gregory asked the city manager to prepare a briefing for the City Council on how Denton manages benefits for same-sex partners.

Some Denton churches are backing the effort, Carlton said. Several Denton churches took out a full page ad in the Denton Record-Chronicle Easter Sunday to affirm inclusiveness.

Two Denton City Council candidates, Joey Hawkins, who is running for District 4, and District 1 incumbent Kevin Roden, earned the endorsement of the Denton Firefighters Association Monday night, which means $500 in campaign contributions will be offered to those two candidates along with in-kind help with the campaign.

Michael Holdsclaw, chairman of the association’s political action committee, said the group’s vote not to support the incumbents Dalton Gregory, for District 2, and Jim Engelbrecht, for District 3, was related to reduced staffing on fire trucks. The City Council agreed about two years ago to dispatch trucks with three firefighters instead of four, a cost-saving move that firefighters say can affect their safety on the job.

The association also declined to endorse candidates last year.

“We’re in that same position with the incumbents this year,” Holdsclaw said.

Overall, the group was looking for key responses to issues that affect the firefighters, Holdsclaw said.

The vote came late Monday night, after a public forum with all the candidates at the Central Fire Station. In addition to staffing, the firefighters asked questions about the continuation of the meet-and-confer bargaining agreements and finishing construction of new training facility.