City Clerk Donnie Holloway’s office is in charge of recording and transcribing aldermen minutes for city record. Holloway said Deputy City Clerk Coretta Logan was charged with transcribing the minutes from the recorded tape of the meeting.

“I have no idea (what happened),” Holloway said about the missing portion of the minutes.

The agreement between Biglane and Middleton was signed Dec. 29, but Auburn Avenue resident Beth Foster said bulldozers were on the Arlington property directly by her house knocking down trees on Christmas Eve.

Biglane obtained an oil and gas lease from the City of Natchez Aug. 27, 2011.

Nix has said Biglane was under the impression the operation was approved, because it had an oil and gas lease with the city and based on other information provided to the company by planning department staff prior to Nix being hired as city planner.

On Jan. 11, the preservation commission decided to postpone any action on the oil operation until after more information was gathered.

Drilling apparently continued presumably under the permission of the agreement approved by the aldermen, because on Jan. 17 Middleton reported to the aldermen that the preliminary exploration resulted in a dry hole.

It did not result in a dry hole for the Fosters, however, whose backyard was turned into a giant mud hole after the trees were cleared, land excavated and the drilling rig that towered above the trees was set up for the preliminary exploration.

“It wasn’t our property, but it was my kids’ backyard,” Foster said. “They used to come out here and play. It was beautiful out here, we had deer out here constantly and some of the biggest owls I have ever seen. Now that’s all gone.”

Once the drilling began, Foster said the vibrations were so bad they knocked a large picture and a mounted deer head off the walls of her house. The spotlight from the operation, she said, lit up her bedroom in the early morning hours.

Foster said Biglane came to her house once and said that if the noise was too much, he would pay for the family to stay in a hotel.

“But I wasn’t packing up four kids, a dog and a cat and taking them to a hotel,” Foster said.

Now all that is left of the wooded playground is mud and muck and a plastic orange fence surrounding the standing pools of muddy water several feet deep on the property. The hole used for preliminary exploration has been covered.

Brown said the oil and gas board has ordered Biglane to clean up the site.

Biglane returned to the preservation commission in May with an amended application for a second proposed oil operation, which is on 15.7 acres and incorporates the area on the opposite side of Arlington where the company conducted the oil exploration behind the Fosters’ house without going through the city’s procedural process.

The preservation commission and subsequently the planning commission denied Biglane’s application. Biglane’s appeal of the preservation commission’s decision was denied by the board of aldermen.

Biglane’s application before the oil and gas board is seeking authority to drill the well previously denied by the city on historic Arlington property. The application also seeks to force pool land ownership in the proposed 40-acre oil unit.

Forced pooling essentially forces non-consenting landowners to join the agreements with their neighbors.

Holloway said he would have to consult with City Attorney Hyde Carby on what to do about the incorrect Jan. 10 aldermen meeting minutes.

Carby said there is a procedure in place in which the minutes could be corrected and amended for the record.

Carby said he would have to further look into the questions of the legality of the agreement since it was never included in the city’s meeting minutes and the drilling activity took place under that agreement.

“It’s so far removed from when the board actually took action,” Carby said. “We have to resolve the conflict between it not being recorded in the minutes and the board plainly taking action.”

Carby said he would also have to look further into whether the agreement would also apply to the second proposed drilling operation, which is the operation that will be heard by the oil and gas board.