DENTON, Texas – A lawsuit filed in Texas over a local town’s decision to ban fracking contends the state’s school children could lose out on millions of dollars in lost revenues because of the move.

Fifty-nine percent of Denton, Texas residents approved a ban on “fracking” – an oil and gas extraction method – during the Nov. 4 election over concerns about safety, pollution, traffic and noise.

But a lawsuit filed by the Texas Oil and Gas Association and the Texas General Land Office the next day seeking to overturn the decision illustrates how a ban will impact the state’s students in a big way, The Southeast Texas Record reports.

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The Texas Constitution set aside much of the state’s public lands to be managed by the Texas General Land Office with the goal of generating funding for public schools, with revenues from land sales or oil and gas leases held in a Permanent School Fund.

The lawsuit contends the GLO has “the sacred and solemn responsibility to the school children of Texas to manage oil and gas leases for state-owned mineral interests and state-owned lands in within the City of Denton,” and the fracking ban jeopardizes revenues from active leases there, the news site reports.

Denton’s fracking ban will mean the loss of millions in revenue for the Permanent School Fund because “the prohibition against hydraulic fracturing will completely destroy the value of the school kids’ minerals,” GLO Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson alleges in the lawsuit.

Patterson’s lawsuit points out that the Railroad Commission of Texas has authority over “all oil and gas wells in Texas,” and that “no home rule ordinance shall contain any provision inconsistent with the general laws enacted by the Legislature …,” the Southeast Texas Record reports.

The Texas Oil and Gas Association claims the ban is unconstitutional and violates state laws.

According to the lawsuit, the wells in Denton are a big deal because they connect to the Barnett Shale, “which is estimated to contain the largest reserves of any onshore natural gas field in the United States,” the news site reports.

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There’s likely trillions of cubic feet of natural gas there “remaining to be produced,” but fracking is the only economical way to get it out, the suit reads.

Basically, fracking is a method of blasting water and sand and other things down a crack in the rock to loosen things up and get the gas flowing, a practice that’s been around for decades.

The lawsuit against Denton alleges the ban on fracking “criminalizes a standard industry practice safely used in the United States since the 1940s,” the Record reports.

Railroad Commission Chairwoman Christi Craddick, meanwhile, said she plans to continue to issue permits for fracking in Denton, regardless of the recent vote.

“It’s my job to give permits, not Denton’s … We’re going to continue permitting up there because that’s my job,” she told the Dallas Morning News last week.

Lawmakers could also address the issue, the Morning News reports.