Sep. 7--FORT WORTH -- In the Crestwood neighborhood, west of downtown, neighbors are going door to door to fight a high-impact drilling permit for a site near Greenwood Cemetery.

The plan calls for a natural gas drill site in a grove of old-growth trees along the Trinity River. The original plan called for dozens of trucks serving the site to rumble down a narrow blacktop road, past a Little League field and a playground, behind more than 60 houses, and along the Trinity River hike-and-bike trail.

The site is near Rockwood Park, so it will require a hearing before the City Council. And it's just one example of what may be the future of gas drilling in Fort Worth.

The city requires gas wells to be 600 feet from houses, parks, churches, schools or hospitals, unless companies get a special high-impact permit. The system, in place for two years, has been controversial from the beginning, and both proponents and critics of urban gas drilling want to change it. A task force that is rewriting the city gas ordinance is expected to begin discussions in a few weeks.

Fort Worth has gotten requests for about 120 high-impact permits since the system was set up, out of about 1,150 wells in all. Of those, more than half -- 64 -- have been issued in the last year, and 50 have been issued in the last seven months.

In most of those cases, the energy companies got waivers from the surrounding property owners. The City Council has considered about 10. The council has never voted against a high-impact permit, although a few have been delayed and later withdrawn.

In the last year, Chesapeake Energy has asked for 44 high-impact permits. XTO Energy has requested 13, and Devon Energy has applied for five. Frost Brothers and Quicksilver Resources have requested one each.

Higher stakes

Whatever happens in Crestwood, many observers agree that gas drilling in the Barnett Shale will continue to move closer to homes in established neighborhoods.

"The more you drill up the easy sites, the more you're going to get into the hard ones," said Councilman Carter Burdette, who represents Crestwood.

The distance between gas wells and surrounding homes has been one of the most basic arguments since gas drilling began in Fort Worth. As much as half of the land in the city, which lies above the Barnett Shale natural gas field, has been leased to drilling companies. Neighborhoods have begun banding together to negotiate ever-more-lucrative deals. In some residential areas, homeowners are earning $25,000 an acre in upfront bonuses, and 25 percent royalties on gas production.