The Law of Unintended Consequences is in force throughout the Barnett Shale, the vast sea of natural gas that bubbles just beneath the surface of Denton County and much of North Texas. Our neighbors in the small community of Dish have just stumbled onto another clause in this thorny law, and they’re trying to get an amendment. We wish them well.

As the economic benefits of the Barnett Shale have become evident over the past couple of years, so have the drawbacks, though at a much slower pace. Landowners have enjoyed the money they’ve received for leasing their mineral rights to one of several gas exploration companies that have descended upon the area since spiraling natural gas prices made it economically feasible to drill for it in the stingy sedimentary shale of North Texas. The down side has been noisy trucks that damage rural roads and raise clouds of dust, noise and light pollution caused by wells that run 24 hours a day, pristine land littered with pipes, machinery and the other abandoned detritus of drilling operations, and the contamination of groundwater by the noxious sludge that is used to crack open the shale and free the precious gas.

The residents of Dish have run afoul of another Unintended Consequence. Exploration companies have to be able to move the gas from the wellheads, and for that they need pipelines. Dish Town Attorney Bryn Meredith told the Record-Chronicle’s Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe that the companies have discovered if they form a gas utility company, they suddenly have the power of eminent domain to obtain easements across the land of anyone in the proposed pipeline’s path.

Dish town commissioner William Sciscoe is not unappreciative of the benefits of Barnett Shale development — he has some mineral leases himself — but he is shocked and saddened at what he sees happening in Dish to his neighbors who have no way to fight having their land dug up for pipelines.

“It’s been heart-wrenching,” Sciscoe told Heinkel-Wolfe. “People have no say, no recourse. There are high-pressure pipelines literally under their toes in their front yards and driveways.”

Dish Mayor Calvin Tillman has found an even greater long-term threat: Developers are wary about planning projects in an area that might become a target for a gas pipeline easement claim.

Meredith, the town attorney, doesn’t believe the Legislature had jury-rigged gas “utility” companies in mind when it granted eminent domain rights to established utility companies, so he’s drawn up a resolution asking lawmakers to somehow rein in rapacious pipeline construction by these hastily formed “utilities.” Tillman says he’s going to circulate the resolution among other cities in the Barnett Shale and urge them to pass it, too.

It will be interesting to see how Tillman, Sciscoe, Meredith, et al, fare against the forces of Big Gas. Exploration companies enjoyed a brief honeymoon in North Texas during the early days of the gas boom, but they have had to resort to massive public-relations efforts as the Law of Unintended Consequences has kicked in.

Chesapeake Energy Corp., one of the larger gas producers, has hired movie actor Tommy Lee Jones as a spokesman for its operations, and the hero of Lonesome Dove is now ubiquitous on North Texas’ billboards, and in newspaper and television ads. To hear old Woodrow Call tell it, opposing a gas-drilling operation is akin to lobbing a hand grenade at the Alamo. We can’t help but wonder if he’s got a well in his backyard, or if someone’s digging a pipeline through it.

Chesapeake has also hired local TV news reader Tracy Rowlett to head up something called “Shale TV,” a Web site that will feature nothing but news about the Barnett Shale. Rowlett insists that the Web site will be even-handed, and present both sides of any controversy. We hope Rowlett will forgive us our skepticism on that one.