The Denton City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to impose a moratorium on new gas drilling and production permits, giving the city some breathing room to finish an ongoing ordinance overhaul. The moratorium will last for 120 days, although the council could extend it if necessary. During that time, city staff members are supposed to complete their review of current drilling regulations and offer recommended changes.

DRC file photo

Representatives from Kinder Morgan and Atmos Energy announced during a town hall-style meeting Thursday night in Ponder that they have made repairs and installed new equipment at the gas plant at 200 Robinson Road, shown Aug. 7, 2010.

PONDER — Residents learned during a town hall-style meeting Thursday night that the operators of a gas plant have made repairs and installed new equipment — done so in response to more than a year’s worth of complaints about odors emanating from the facility.

Associated Press

The Denton City Council will consider lowering most of the city's fees on the natural gas industry at a meeting today.

Denton City Council members will meet today to consider lowering most of the city’s fees on the natural gas industry, after a consultant found they were too high. The city passed higher permit and inspection fees last summer but has yet to impose them pending the results of the consultant’s review.

DRC/David Minton

A crowd spills into the hallway April 29 during a Corinth City Council special session to decide if variances should be granted to XTO Energy for gas well development at the Lake Sharon Christian Center.

Citizens of the Shale | Part 5: Bone-colored tumbleweeds roll across the smooth, bright concrete parking lot toward the gas well as a volunteer steps down from his pickup and walks to the front doors of First United Methodist Church of Krum. He is one of several adults who will help prepare for an after-school program that day.

For the Denton Record-Chronicle/Spike Johnson

Proper cementing is critical to gas well drilling and gas production. Substandard cement jobs can lead to a host of environmental and well-control problems, such as the blowout of an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico last year.

Citizens of the Shale | Part 4: When Susan Knoll, her husband, Michael, and their teenage daughter moved into their $1 million, 4,500-square-foot brick home in Bartonville three years ago, Knoll couldn’t imagine a more idyllic place — her dream home surrounded by trees on 2 acres with a pool and three fireplaces. But today, Knoll says, a gas well dug behind their property has cast her family into what she describes as a scene out of a Stephen King novel, complete with noxious water, foul air, numbing headaches and grasshoppers falling dead from the sky.

DMN file photo/Sonya N. Hebert

Dish resident Charles Smith pours dirty water from a home water filtration system at his son Damon’s home in Dish last June. Homeowners Damon and Amber Smith believe their well water is contaminated with pollutants from a nearby gas well.

Citizens of the Shale | Part 3: In Parker County, Tom and Barbara Vastine say their well water seemed to change last summer, smelling different than normal. So they started buying bottled water for drinking and cooking. Natural gas wells aren’t visible from their home, but they are not far away — over the hill to the southwest, up the road to the north. They thought that might be the source of the problem.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

Williams Gulf Coast Production screened this natural gas processing plant, located on Scenic Drive in Flower Mound, to look like a barn.

Citizens of the Shale | Part 2: FLOWER MOUND — Ever since this former frontier settlement was incorporated 50 years ago, town officials and residents took pride in protecting their slice of rural paradise along Grapevine Lake. Town leaders fashioned one master plan after another to protect surrounding ranches, open landscapes, clusters of live oaks and other “ecological resources” from the threat of urbanization as the town flourished, eventually becoming one of America’s fastest-growing cities in the late 1990s.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

Rebekah Sheffield and her husband moved to Dish in 1996, with dreams of restoring a 100-year-old farmhouse. Today, their home, shown March 17, is surrounded by the town’s many natural gas production facilities.

Citizens of the Shale | Part 1: With 14,000 gas wells and a maze of pipelines and production equipment, the country’s need for a cleaner fuel conflicts with the fast-growing cities and suburbs in 23 North Texas counties above the Barnett Shale.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas ordered Oncor on Thursday to take a northern route around Ray Roberts Lake as it builds a 345-kilovolt power line from Krum to Anna. The order came after more than 700 intervenors filed tens of thousands of pages of documents, provided four days of testimony to a panel of state judges, paid millions in legal fees for help with the nine-month battle and packed several rooms on the seventh and eighth floors of the William B. Travis Building in Austin last week to make their final, direct pleas to commissioners.

Calvin Tillman

DISH — Residents here will need another bulldog come May, maybe sooner. Mayor Calvin Tillman — an outspoken advocate for this town of 201, especially when it comes to the negative effects of shale natural gas production — told residents over the weekend that he will not seek re-election. Tillman and his wife, Tiffiney, announced earlier this year that they had put their home up for sale.