FAYETTEVILLE — We have a great many ideas about property ownership and rights in our country that keep us comfortable until there is a sudden yank on the carpet beneath our feet. Imagine, for example, a truck arriving in your driveway one day hauling people with huge equipment, who unload it onto your yard and begin erecting a drilling rig without your permission. I realize this sounds preposterous and many of you might stop reading right now, but before you do just answer one question. Do you own the mineral rights under your home and lot?
“No” or don’t know? Better keep reading.
A “split estate” is one in which one party may own the surface of a piece of property, but others own the minerals beneath it and have a legal and dominant right to access those minerals. As explained by the Bureau of Land Management, the government agency that tends to the nation’s mineral holdings, “successfully bidding on and acquiring the oil and gas lease gives the lessee or designated operator the right to enter and occupy as much of the surface as is reasonably required to explore, drill, and produce the oil and natural gas resources on the leasehold, subject to applicable federal laws, regulations, lease stipulations and permit requirements.”
The vast majority of us think we will never have to worry about the drilling rig scenario playing out 200 feet from our bedroom windows (although around here quarries are causing similar grief to nearby landowners) so we tend to be thankful that at least this is not our problem. Unfortunately because of that “everything isconnected” clause in the manual about how the planet works, we would be wrong.
People need to know, yet rarely do, what the full price of harvesting that gas will be to them because health costs and land, air and water safety may outweigh anything their royalty checks will ever cover.
“Clean natural gas” really isn’t clean. Long before it is burned, bootprints stomp all over the environment in the production and distribution of this fossil fuel. Also, in Arkansas, there are not enough inspectors nor enough government oversight of the thousands of wells now in production, and there could be 10 times as many wells drilled in the years to come.
“Split Estate,” is also the title of a documentary and, as is the case with many documentaries, sometimes truth is more shocking than fiction. The implications of doing nothing to protect the property and health of our citizens, who are being subjected to natural gas drilling and fracking in the Fayetteville shale and elsewhere, are frightening. The consequences to the rest of us from the use of Arkansas’ fresh water and the pollution of that water with chemicals, the types and quantities of which the industry does not have to disclose, have the potential for horror stories in our state similar to those in this movie featuring citizens in Colorado and New Mexico. The documentary’s maps of the thousands of well sites in those states are chilling, as is the fact that the oil and gas industry is exempt from various provisions of this nation’s most importantenvironmental protections, including parts of the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Emergency Planning and Community Rightto-Know Act. It is therefore up to us to find out what we need to know, and independent filmmakers are trying to show the stories that illustrate what is being done to people.
Fortunately, “Split Estate” is being shown in Fayetteville at noon Saturday as part of the 540 Film Festival in the main auditorium of the Global Campus building on the downtown square. Those of us who hunger for smaller films of high quality and unique presentation have experienced feast and famine over the last few years so we are lucky to have this new festival start. This festival has set a goal to bring regional communities together in activities and efforts that unite and involve our corner of the state.
Opening festival events will begin at the Town Center during Fayetteville’s First Thursday activities and movies are scheduled through Sunday at two main venues, the Global Campus and the UARK Bowl building on Dickson Street. They will be showing feature movies, documentaries, shorts, narratives,and student works. Also, the “540 School” events will include opportunities such as acting lessons for kids through the Trike Theatre as well as times for discussions with and among filmmakers and scriptwriters.
Let’s hope the 540 Film Fest will be wildly successful and becomes an annual event. And please, for your own sake, don’t miss “Split Estate.” FRAN ALEXANDER IS A LOCAL RESIDENT AND ACTIVE ENVIRONMENTALIST.
Opinion, Pages 4 on 11/02/2009
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