ABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) – On the same day that the Abilene City Council approved the ‘Rebuild ABI’ program, which encourages residential development in two interior areas of Abilene, they also approved an oil well in one of those areas.
The oil well will be located in the 2400 block of Burger Street, half a block from Ortiz Elementary and just a few feet away from some homes in the area. Place Four Councilman Brian Yates is the only council member who voted against the oil well.
“I can’t square this in my mind that it is a good idea to build an oil well 85 feet from a house in a neighborhood that is zoned RS 6 after we just got done an incentive to create single-family homes in a neighborhood empowerment zone, which this happens to be the heart of. It’s 500 feet from Sears Park and 800 feet from Ortiz Elementary,” Yates said.
Yates added that the company who is drilling the well met all the legal standards to do so, but said the question is not how you do it but should you do it?
The city shared that they notified everybody within the 200-foot requirement and even went beyond that to a 500-foot notification. The city also said there are serval wells within Abilene’s city limits, most of them in the impact area and about 40 wells on the southeast side of Abilene Regional Airport.
