Sep 10, 2025 Planning and Zoning Commission on 2025-09-10 6:00 PM

Okay, it is 6.01 and I call the work session for Planning and Zoning Commission to order. And I guess the first item that we have is comments on agenda items. I see nobody here, I'm assuming there's no comments. And then public hearing items, again, no one's here, so I guess I'm not doing that. So we'll flip over and go over to our work session. So again, number one, citizen comments and consent items. Nothing? Okay. Clarification on agenda items listed on the agenda for this meeting. Does anybody need clarification? Okay. Then we'll move on to our work session reports, PZ25-175. Thank you. Good evening everyone, Angie Manglaris, Development Review Manager. And continuing with our trend of educational boot camps, today we're going to be delving into the world of gas wells and gas well regulations. So some things we'll cover today is gas well development, including zoning districts, required setbacks, reverse setbacks, protected land uses, measuring setbacks. We'll touch briefly on gas well development site plans and we'll talk about relief measures. First, I thought it might be kind of helpful to see areas in which there are or have been gas wells within both the city and in the extraterritorial jurisdiction. So green generally notes gas wells that are, they could be active or plugged within the city limits and then the red would be those areas in our ETJ. By and large, they are to the west of I-35W and then a little bit more along our southern boundaries. So first, before we go too far into what the DDC says as it relates to gas wells, it's important to understand state law and where our ability to regulate gas well regulations comes into play. So the Texas Natural Resource Code, Section 81 provides some guidance, essentially says except for as provided by subsection C, and we'll go into that in just a second, a municipality or political subdivision may not enact or enforce an ordinance or other measure that effectively bans, limits or otherwise regulates an oil and gas operation. That subsection C does go on to say that the municipality or other political subdivision is expressly preempted except that a municipality may enact, amend or enforce an ordinance that otherwise regulates only above ground activity and the regulation is generally to govern fire and emergency response, traffic, lights or noise or impose reasonable setback requirements. And not effectively prohibit an oil and gas well operation that is conducted by a reasonable owner. So having said all of that, excuse me, DDC subchapter 6 is dedicated to gas wells and that specifies our requirements for gas well development within the city of Denton. The purpose of subchapter 6 is to necessitate reasonable regulations to prevent devaluation of property, protect watersheds and to ensure that gas well drilling and production activities are compatible with adjacent land uses. Furthermore, these regulations are designed to protect the health, safety and general welfare of the public. So we treat gas wells like a function of zoning. You will find it in the table of allowed uses as its own allowed use. As touched on, we can't prohibit gas wells and so they are permitted in all of our zoning districts but do come with some use specific standards. And those are contained in subchapter 6. So we do treat gas wells as an industrial land use. The regulations as I mentioned are laid out in both subchapter 5, the table of allowed uses, but really more specifically subchapter 6 is where all of those regulations lie. Gas well development, because it's a function of zoning, this applies to land area within the city limits. So in our ETJ, we don't have land use authority out there. This is everything that's within the city limits. So a couple things, the big topics when it comes to gas well development and you may hear us on occasion or see it referenced on a plat are setbacks and reverse setbacks. I think first before we dive into what those are, it might help to understand what we call a protected use. And so protected use is defined as any dwelling, church, park, public library, hospital, schools, senior centers, recreational centers, hotels or motels. We consider all of those protected uses. The requirement is for -- and we're going to use our pointer here a little bit. You see that? Okay. A drilling and production site setback, that is when a new gas well is coming in, it must be setback from protected uses. So we have our home and we have our church here. We have a minimum distance separation requirement for those uses. So we have drilling and production site setbacks. And I'll get more into the specifics of the distances for setbacks. But here's your protected uses. For a new gas well coming in, we measure from that use to the boundaries of the gas well that's coming in. A reverse setback is not a term we use a ton, but it's when the inverse of the situation occurs. This gas well is already in existence, but a protected use is wanting to come in and be adjacent to it. So that use must meet a minimum reverse setback from an already approved or existing drilling and production site. Really different terminology, but essentially kind of mean the same thing. When the new gas well is coming in, that setback is the new gas well being separated from those protected uses. Or if that gas well is already in existence, residential development or a protected land use wants to come in around it, we'll call it a reverse setback in that case. This might help clarify some things a little bit further. So for new drilling and production sites, and really all of our zoning districts apart from the light industrial and heavy industrial, the site setback is 1,000 feet. We do have a minimum setback of 500 feet, and that minimum setback is the minimum separation distance that must be maintained. For reverse setbacks, it's 500 feet and 250 feet for the minimum. Then within the LI and HI zoning where you're not likely to have any residential or those protected uses, that is reduced to 250 feet for drilling and production site setbacks, and then that reverse setback can be taken all the way down to 250 feet if it happens to be adjacent to some land use. This goes on to further elaborate that, again, in all of our zoning districts apart from LI or HI, so our industrial zoning districts, the reverse setback for a drilling and production site needs to be 500 feet, but that minimum reverse setback could be as low as 250 feet. And again, those are the distances between the gas well and protected land uses within the area. When we measure setbacks, this is a map kind of drilled in that'll show in the red, you have your 500 foot setback, and then the blue would be the 1,000. These are the wells, kind of the different shapes, and that yellow area, we can generally just call their pad site. So when looking at a drilling and production site setback, we're measuring from the proposed boundaries of that site in a straight line to either the closest exterior point of any occupied structure that's a protected use, or to the boundary of a residential lot. Reverse setback, do it the inverse way, you're taking that closest point from either a protected use, the structure that's habited, the residential lot, and you're measuring in a straight line to the closest boundary of an already existing gas well pad site. So if we were to say that this was a, we'll use this one, this is a protected use, those lines are being measured, we're not like, it's not following a street or the typical means of transportation, more of the as the crow flies measurement system, and it's from either the residential lot boundary, if it's a residential lot, or the structure that a protected use is in to the boundary of the gas well pad site. It sounds like a lot, there's a lot of terms, setback and reverse setback, but essentially we're measuring distance to distance or point to point, making sure we meet those minimum setbacks. It's also important to note that because all this is a function of zoning, this does apply within the city limits, then the ETJ, we can't apply it in those land areas. For circumstances when we do get new gas well sites wanting to come into the city, and I will say it's been years since one has even asked to come in, we do have a process outlined within subchapter 6 on how that should occur, so we have what we call gas well development site plans, and that is the process through which somebody could get a permit to establish a new gas well. So somebody would come in, they would ask for a permit for a new drilling and production site, and we would direct them to the gas well development site plan process. That gas well development site plan process is carried out like a development plan, so they would actually follow procedures in subchapter 2, the gas well development process, and at that point staff would review everything associated with that new proposed pad site. Once approved, it has pretty similar time frames to all of our other kind of applications that get approved. Let's see, it expires unless a complete application for a gas well permit has been filed within a year of the approval date of that site plan, or no drilling or production activities have occurred on the site for a period of three years. So once somebody gets that site plan approved, they have a year to get that permit filed, and then up to three years if there's no activity that has been occurring on the site. Again, these are not things we see regularly at all today, I actually can't tell you the last time we did see one, it predates my time here, but there is a process, should for some reason that ever come up again, it's outlined in both subchapter 6 and in subchapter 2. And then, okay, finally, we talked a lot about setbacks and reverse setbacks. We do provide relief measures for those who would seek to possibly reduce the reverse or setback for their use, and so we'll walk through the options for gas well site setbacks, and then we'll walk through the options for protected use reverse setbacks. So for a new gas well operator wanting to come in, should they want to seek a reduction from that required setback, we have three options for them. One is a waiver procedure, one would be to go to the ZBA, the Zoning Board of Adjustment, and then the other is to seek relief through administrative processes. For the waiver procedure, that setback can be reduced to as low as 250 feet, so that is that minimum setback that we talked about earlier, but it requires the operator to get written notarized waivers from 100% of landowners of protected uses and residential lots that are within that affected area. So we would need 100% sign off rate for that reduction. Option two would be to go to the Zoning Board of Adjustment. As you all know, the Zoning Board of Adjustment can grant relief and variances, and they could vote on that and reduce the setback to as low as 250 feet as well. And then finally, administrative relief procedures, that allows for the setback to be taken down to 375 feet, so not quite as much as some of the other procedures, and the operator needs to agree to limit that gas well development on existing sites that might be located closer to the protected uses, and that goes through our typical administrative review processes and would be reviewed by the director. So that's a new site looking to come in. What we see more commonly is a new protected use seeking to come in closer to a gas well, and so in that case, they may ask for relief from the reverse setback measures. So say there was an apartment complex wanting to come in on a lot that was largely encumbered by that reverse setback, those are the cases we see more on a day-to-day basis or day-to-days extreme, a yearly basis maybe it comes up. So similar procedures, they could seek to go to the Zoning Board of Adjustment. They're allowed to grant relief should they find it's necessary. Still reviewing to ensure that they still feel like public health and safety are generally preserved. It follows all the same criteria approval that generally variance would follow. So the ZBA will review it for all of that, and again, it can be taken down to that minimum setback that we allow, which is 250 feet. Applicants could also seek, again, administrative relief, and that is allowed to go down to 375 feet, so again, not quite the full 250. And relief could be granted provided that at least 50 percent of the site is encumbered, and that they've utilized the other methods that we offer to help make their site work. And so when -- I'll go back to my multifamily example. It's kind of the easiest to visualize, and this wouldn't apply to a home anyway. But if a protected use is coming in on a site that's encumbered by a gas well, we offer some built-in relief measures that would allow them to maybe increase the height of their building by up to 20 percent, or reduce their parking by 20 percent, and the reason being is that allows them to utilize the space in a different manner so that they're not necessarily getting closer to the gas well, but they're going taller and maybe more narrow, and they don't maybe need that relief. So should they demonstrate that that didn't quite work for them, and they're, you know, still encumbered by the site, at that point, they can come forward and ask for administrative relief. When we review those, we are looking for what other benefit is occurring in this to make sure the site still works, but again, it can't be reduced all the way to the 250. Staff can only grant down to 375. So it's not quite the full relief, but it also doesn't take as many steps to get there. So depending on what the use is, that works for people as well. A little complicated, and there's a lot to all of this, but hopefully that makes sense. And that was it. So I'm happy to -- that was a lot of information, but not too much in depth on some topics, so if we need to come back later, too, we can. My question is, what -- first of all, I want to say very wonderful presentations. They're all very professional and educational. Appreciate you and all your work. Are there any items in the codes on six or two, or anything under review for modifications? I know we have our development code review committee. Is it Klai, our chair? I can tell you, no, it's not. Okay. No. We're talking trees. Okay. Any other questions for Angie? Go ahead. It's not really a question, just more of educate a person that's newer to Texas. As an adult, this is my fourth state I've lived in, and is it just that there is gas that's plentiful in the Texas soil and that's why you see so many gas wells and you have it in the code? It's just because of that huge natural resource that's here? There is definitely the natural resource here in the state of Texas, and then obviously we're preempted by the state from prohibiting it. I think this map really does a good job at showing where those resources are located. It's not that necessarily 35 is an impossible barrier, but that is sort of that western line. Is it the Barnett Shale? You can pretty clearly see where the Barnett Shale exists under our city limit. It is a natural resource, and we're preempted from regulating it, and again, this map is a great depiction of exactly where that resource is. Okay. It's just, you know, it's always interesting because every area has different nuances. Yes. Thank you. I'll actually add to that because I was actually working here when a lot of the gas well development was happening, and Denton was very proactive in shutting them down, and then that's when the state decided to get involved, and the state started changing rules for everybody. Here's another comment, did you call me? Another comment, Commissioner Dyer, I'll agree with Clye, and just to piggyback on that, that's when our current political landscape changed, and there was a spark of activism in the community that we had not seen before over that issue. Were they happy to have the regulation from the state or unhappy to have the regulation from the state? Well, unhappy. In your opinion. Unhappy. But the growth, and it wasn't an anti-development, but this was the beginning of the anti-development movement in Denton in the political group was activated. It was like a button was pushed. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Anzi. Thank you, guys. Yeah. Okay. Well, then I guess that's the only thing left on our work session, so I will adjourn the work session at 621, we've got a few minutes for regular session. Okay. It is 630, and I am calling the regular meeting of the Denton Planning and Zoning Commission to order. Our first order of business is Pledge of Allegiance, so please rise and join me in saying Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I honor the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible. Okay. That moves us on to the next item, item number two, consider approval of the Planning and Zoning Commission's minutes for PZ 25176. I'll entertain them, oh, got a motion and a second, let's vote. Okay, and the item passes, so that moves us on to item number three, Consent Agenda, and I'll entertain a motion. Okay, we have a motion and a second, let's vote. Okay, super long agenda that moves us on to item number four, Planning and Zoning Commission Project Matrix, PZ 25-027. All right, I have no updates for you all for City Council items since our last meeting. We will be, I believe, checking the box on one of our matrix items that's been hanging out there for a while, which was the Guesswell Regulation Discussion, so you'll see that update on the matrix for your next meeting, and we're happy to add anything else to the matrix that you all might wish to discuss. Does anybody have anything they'd like to see added to the matrix? Okay, there are none, that moves us on to item five, Concluding Items. Are there any Concluding Items? Okay, well then I call this meeting adjourned at 633.