BY MIKE LEE AND ELIZABETH CAMPBELL
ALEDO — Dan Johnson moved from California to Texas because he wanted to put down roots, open a business and live the good life.
The pet shop that he and his wife, Laura, run in eastern Parker County is next door to a CES disposal well that handles drilling waste from natural gas wells across the Barnett Shale field. In the last 18 months, the facility has been cited twice by the Texas Railroad Commission. Pools of oily waste have been spilled on the lot, and trucks tracked mud onto the surrounding roads.
Though some of the problems at the site have been fixed, Johnson still has concerns about the operations and filed a complaint with the Railroad Commission in October.
“They’re just a bad neighbor,” he said.
The disposal wells, and the possibility of other groundwater contamination related to gas drilling, are a big concern for the Johnsons and some other Parker County residents. The Johnsons get their water from a well, and if there’s any pollution of the aquifer, their land becomes essentially useless unless they can find another water source.
In addition to the CES site in Aledo, there have been problems at injection wells in Chico, Boyd and Brock. And while the largest gas producer in the area discounts the idea that drilling contributes to water pollution, there have also been reports of problems in small-town water wells and private water wells across the Barnett Shale.
The conflict between the Barnett Shale boom and the population boom is playing out across the semirural counties on the western edge of the Metroplex. The five counties — Denton, Wise, Parker, Johnson and Hood — have seen some of the fastest population growth in North Texas.
All five have seen decades of oil and gas production and contain abandoned oil and gas wells — some of them unplugged. State regulators say there’s no evidence of water pollution from gas drilling. But many local residents and officials are concerned and want the state to do more tests. “That’s all I’m asking for, is just some help to find out where it’s coming from,” said J.D. Clark, the mayor of Chico in Wise County.
Injection wells
Injection wells are used to get rid of the huge amounts of wastewater produced by oil and gas wells. It takes 1.5 million to 5 million gallons of water to hydraulically fracture a typical Barnett well. That water has to be disposed of and can be contaminated with crude oil, drilling chemicals, salt, minerals and metal found deep in the earth.
Injection wells pipe the wastewater deep into the ground, far from the water table or any oil- and gas-producing layers. The Railroad Commission, which oversees oil and gas drilling, requires the wells to be protected by multiple layers of pipe and concrete, which are intended to keep any leaks from escaping.
The commission discovered a leak at the CES well in 2008, after Parker County residents complained about what looked like a drilling-waste spill on the surface of the site. And inspection this fall found an open pressure-monitoring valve.
The Railroad Commission cited the well owner, but spokeswoman Ramona Nye said in an e-mail that the open valve was a minor violation. The previous leak, she said, was contained by the layers of protective casing.
Similar problems have occurred at wells near Boyd and Chico in Wise County. Drilling waste flowed to the surface near the Chico well. Nye said that those wells have been repaired and that there was no danger to groundwater.
But the commission hasn’t done testing to verify that.
“Commission staff does not see a need to test groundwater in any of these well incidents as there has been no evidence that these wellbores have been compromised in a way that would impact usable quality groundwater. Additionally, there has been no reports nor evidence of any contamination of usable quality groundwater at these sites,” Nye said in an e-mail.
Last year in Brock, a steel pipeline leading from a gas well to a disposal well sprang several leaks. The spill cost the owners of Cole’s Nursery hundreds of trees on land near their business. The Cole family recently settled a lawsuit against XTO Energy and its subsidiary, Barnett Gathering. Jim Eggleston, the Coles’ attorney, said the terms are confidential.
“The Coles trust XTO to do what they’ve committed to do,” Eggleston said.
Municipal wells
Three small communities — Chico, Aledo and Hudson Oaks — have had to shut down municipal water wells because of elevated levels of radioactivity. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has been finding low levels of radiation in North Texas groundwater since the 1990s. Between 2006 and 2008, the levels in those cities rose above the federal standard for safe drinking water, said Alicia Diehl, team leader for the agency’s water quality division.Diehl said the increases could have been caused by the drought or by heavy rains in 2007.
“When there’s a drought on the surface and you see the lake levels go down, the aquifer level is dropping and water quality will change somewhat in the aquifer as well,” she said.
Could gas drilling play a role in the contamination? Diehl said that question will take years to answer.
“Groundwater travels through that underground sand very, very slowly,” she said. “If you have a well a mile away from something bad happening . . . you might expect to see something within 10 or 20 years. That’s why I say we’re going to keep monitoring this for 10 or 20 years.”
Clark, in Chico, said he just wants answers.
“If it’s naturally occurring, let’s find out why — what’s occurring in the ground that wasn’t occurring before,” he said. “I wonder about the people on private wells outside the city limits who don’t get their water tested.”
The Chico well is near a saltwater disposal well that has leaked in the past.
Hudson Oaks Mayor Pat Deen said he’s in a tough spot.
“The TCEQ says you can’t link these increases to the Barnett Shale. That’s when activists point fingers at us [cities], but we are doing everything we can,” he said. “We want to make sure the water we provide our residents is safe.”
Bob Patterson, executive director of the Upper Trinity Groundwater Conservation District, said he’s concerned by the water well closures.
“They’re all three surrounded by gas well activity, but we don’t have a link,” he said. “Definitely it’s coincidental suggestion.”
Private wells
The impact on private wells is hard to judge.
A group of landowners near the Johnson-Hill county line reported high levels of toluene in their water in 2008 — enough to sicken and kill their livestock. Toluene is a hydrocarbon found in crude oil. The landowners have since declined to comment, citing a settlement with Williams Production, the company that was drilling near their homes.
The Commission on Environmental Quality doesn’t regulate private water wells, just municipal wells, Diehl said. The Railroad Commission tested the water and found that the toluene levels were below the Environmental Protection Agency’s limit for drinking water.
John Burgoyne, who lives in eastern Parker County, said he began to notice problems with his well water shortly after the drilling boom peaked around 2006. His water well slowed to a trickle, and he began to notice sediment in the water. Sometimes it smelled like rotten eggs. Burgoyne, an engineer by training, believes that the sediment was concrete from drilling operations and that it was forced out of a gas well during hydraulic fracturing.
“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the connections,” he said.
Imogene and Buddy Simpson, who live outside Weatherford, had a similar problem in 2006. Their water well had worked fine for more than a decade. Several gas wells were being drilled near them, and from their home the Simpsons can still hear the compressors running at the well sites.
“We turned the water on, and pure mud was coming out of the faucet,” Imogene Simpson said.
The problem lasted for months and ruined their water heater and faucets. She tried to get a sample of the water tested but couldn’t afford it. Simpson said she will occasionally find sediment in her water, even today.
The groundwater conservation district, which monitors an estimated 8,000 water wells in Hood, Parker, Montague and Wise counties, gets about two calls a week from residents about water problems — sediment, strange odors or a sudden drop in water production. As with the municipal wells, it’s hard to say that gas drilling is the cause, Patterson said.
“That, we have to take with a grain of salt,” he said. “If several people in an area report a problem with their water well, we’re reasonably certain that’s correct.”
The groundwater district was established in 2007 and began gathering data about water use, contamination and other issues this year. After enough information is collected, the district can start making decisions about how to manage wells in its four counties.
“In certain instances, it’s going to mean shutting in some injection wells and that sort of thing,” he said.
Patterson said drilling waste has begun flowing freely from an uncapped, abandoned oil well in Montague County. He’s worried because his four-county district has dozens of such orphan wells, which can create a pathway between the different layers of the earth, allowing the wastewater to move from the layer where it was disposed into other layers — including the aquifer.
Nye said the Railroad Commission is looking into the Montague County problem.
Legislation pending
The biggest producer in the Barnett Shale discounted the possibility that gas drilling contributed to water pollution.
“We work closely with TCEQ and the Railroad Commission as we drill these wells and complete these wells,” Devon Energy spokesman Chip Minty said. “We haven’t encountered a case where our fracture completions have resulted in problems with groundwater.”
Devon is also recycling some of its wastewater, which reduces the need for injection wells. Currently, the company is able to recycle about 15 percent of the water it uses for fracturing.
But the debate about gas drilling’s effect on water quality — particularly hydraulic fracturing — has gone national. The companies that pioneered shale gas drilling in North Texas have begun drilling in the Haynesville Shale in Texas and Louisiana and in the Marcellus Shale in parts of New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Recently, Pennsylvania fined a Houston-based drilling company $120,000 after natural gas turned up in water wells outside of Dimock, Pa.
Environmentalists have questioned whether the chemicals used in fracturing, some of which are toxic, might leach into drinking water. Drilling companies say the fracturing chemicals are used in such small concentrations that they’re harmless. But they have historically refused to reveal what’s in them.
Funding for a study of hydraulic fracturing’s effect on water quality was included in this year’s budget at the EPA, and a bill is pending in Congress that would give the agency authority to regulate fracturing under the federal Clean Water Act.
The bill, House Resolution 2766 by Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., would require companies to reveal the chemicals used in fracturing fluids but not the exact formulas, except in emergencies. “The congresswoman believes the more data we find, the better off we are,” DeGette spokesman Kris Eisenla said.
Closer to home, state Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, wants to hold hearings on the Barnett Shale impact. Keffer, chairman of the House’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, wants to determine whether the Railroad Commission needs more authority to regulate oil and gas drilling in urban areas.
Back in Parker County, Dan and Laura Johnson said CES has laid concrete and gutters to control runoff from the injection well.
“It’s a shame we had to complain to get anything done,” Laura Johnson said. “You’ve got to give the devil his due; they’ve stepped up to the plate and gotten things done.”
