Mud Farming - Land Farming
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John Mayo
Apr 7, 2011, 3:05:50 PM4/7/11
to Landowner's Rights Alliance
As I have mentioned before, I have witnessed the practice described
below withing a mile of my home and property and within natural water
runoff areas that feed Lake Nacogdoches.
John Mayo.
VP LORA
Practice lays waste to land
08:17 AM CDT on Thursday, March 31, 2011
By Spike Johnson / For the Denton Record-Chronicle and Peggy Heinkel-
Wolfe / Staff Writer
It’s 3 a.m.
Dick Ross lies awake in bed as 18-wheelers crawl past his house. Their
headlights stream through his window. They are waiting to dump
drilling waste on a corn farm 50 feet from his front door. The
concoction is a mystery to him, except that when it blows through the
air, it strips the paint off his house.
For two years, he has fought the Texas Railroad Commission over permit
violations involving the dumpsite, submitting photos of trucks dumping
waste at all hours of the night and letters demanding that his
neighbor’s dumpsite be tested for contamination, as required by law.
His campaign to shut down the dumpsite triggered threats of litigation
from the waste haulers and a giant pile of e-mail correspondence from
commission staff, attorneys and scientists assuring him that the
dumpsite doesn’t pose any health risks.
ALSO ONLINE
Map of known locations
XTO permits
Other Hill County permits
Industry survey of waste management
Texas Railroad Commission guidelines for waste management
SERIES BREAKDOWN
With 14,000 gas wells and a maze of pipelines and production
equipment, the country’s need for a cleaner fuel conflicts with the
fast-growing cities and suburbs in 23 North Texas counties above the
Barnett Shale.
• SUNDAY: In the small town of Dish, the proliferation of gas industry
equipment is creating an atmosphere of concern.
• Atmosphere of concern
• Industry fueling region’s transformation
• Dawn Cobb: Citizens of the Shale
• MONDAY: Flower Mound, recognized for its “SmartGrowth” planning, now
grapples with the changes of a budding gas industry.
• Defending the Mound
• TUESDAY: Water, a precious resource in a high-growth state, could be
under threat by a process known as hydraulic fracturing that is used
to extract gas from deep underground.
• Just below the surface
• WEDNESDAY: As other states question hydraulic fracturing, Texas
continues the practice amid claims the state is ill-equipped to
monitor it closely. Also: A look at cement’s role in gas drilling.
• Hard work ahead
• Cement plays vital role in drilling
• TODAY: Six million people live above some 27 trillion cubic feet of
gas in the Barnett Shale, now at the center of attention among policy-
makers looking to balance the industry and North Texas lifestyles.
Also: A look at a practice known as “landfarming.”
• Striking the balance
• Attack was 'pure chaos'
Today, sitting on the wooden porch of his rural Hillsboro home in Hill
County, Ross, 64, contemplates his plans for a peaceful pursuit:
raising South African Boer goats on his small 10-acre farm.
“My advice to anyone dealing with the gas industry: Sell your whole
place, get the hell out,” Ross says. “They cheat you out of your
money, wreck your view and destroy your property value.”
Yet, even as he contemplates retirement, the former educational
supplies salesman is continuing his fight against the Railroad
Commission’s permitting process by providing guidance to others who
are protesting dumpsites in their own communities.
•
Ross and other farmers find it hard to reconcile Texans’ storied love
of the land with the growing practice of spreading tons of drilling
mud and other toxic waste across it, a process euphemistically called
“landfarming.”
As the state’s permits for natural gas drilling in the Barnett Shale
region soar, more and more parcels of the Texas prairie are being
turned into dumping grounds for disposing of the industry’s waste —
increasing the thousands of approved “landfarms” already in
existence.
About 1.2 barrels of solid waste are created with each foot drilled,
according to the American Petroleum Institute. Simply to reach the
approximate 8,000-foot depth of a Barnett Shale gas well, drilling
creates more than 9,600 barrels, or 403,200 gallons, of solid waste.
That does not take into account any horizontal drilling performed
after reaching that depth. For the 14,000 Barnett Shale wells drilled
so far, the waste would cover the entire city of Fort Worth in more
than an inch of drill cuttings, slurry, heavy metals and other toxic
compounds.
The Environmental Protection Agency is set to study much of the
lifecycle of hydraulic fracturing — the controversial process of
pressure-pumping chemical-laden water to release the gas — including
the final disposition of millions of barrels of wastewater that flows
back with the gas.
But far less attention has been paid to the tons of drilling mud and
other solids being spread across the land.
Some landowners open their gates and bank accounts to the industry’s
need to dump the waste, oblivious to environmental risks. While
official eyes are averted, permits to dump are stretched beyond their
limits. And as neighbors eye each other with increasing distrust,
millions of gallons of toxic waste are spread on the land, sometimes
overflowing into waterways, sometimes becoming airborne and blowing
across the prairie.
The 986 square miles of Hill County has around 35,000 residents. Much
of the land is owned by ranchers and farmers.
“These people believe what they’re told — that this waste is safe,”
Ross says. “Now their crops won’t grow.”
The landfarm near Ross’ home was properly permitted within the
regulations current at that time, according to Railroad Commission
spokeswoman Ramona Nye. After Ross complained to the commission, an
inspector tested the landfarm for NORM, naturally occurring
radioactive material often present in drilling waste, and found
readings “within background levels for NORM” in the soil, Nye wrote in
an e-mail.
The Railroad Commission has jurisdiction as long as the soil is on the
ground. Once dried and airborne, that’s a different matter.
The agency doesn’t have jurisdiction over air quality — that belongs
to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
•
This land is perched above the Barnett Shale, a 350 million-year-old
rock formation beneath much of North Texas. The U.S. Geological Survey
has estimated the Barnett Shale contains about 30 trillion cubic feet
of natural gas reserves. Currently the largest natural gas play in the
world, industry officials say, the Barnett Shale is a source of
significant corporate profit and the country’s natural gas
transformation.
In 2008, Ross noticed changes in his view after XTO Energy Inc.
secured permits to dump the equivalent of 35 Olympic-sized swimming
pools of drilling waste on the Kimbrell family farmland opposite his
front door.
Lines of trucks would form through the night to dump their loads,
which were later found to be outside of permit regulations. Ross made
open records requests of the Railroad Commission and found that the
daily toxicity tests for the waste, required by state rules, were
never carried out or enforced. Ross began to worry for the health of
his animals as a white dust from the landfarm opposite settled on
their grass and feed. He worried about a decline in his property
value, too.
“I could feel the air sting my skin and make my eyes burn,” Ross
says.
His complaints sparked threats of legal action. The landowner and
family living on the farm next door even followed him when he went to
town, Ross says. Trucks would sound their horns and spin their wheels
as they passed his house.
Meanwhile, permit applications for the site came into the Railroad
Commission and were approved by e-mail the next day, without a site
inspection or toxicity tests. Nothing in the process allows for public
notice, for either comment or protest, on the dumping.
Minor permits, such as a one-time, off-site dumping of water-based
drilling fluid, are good for only 60 days, Nye wrote.
“Landfarming is a method of treatment and disposal of low toxicity
wastes in which the wastes are spread upon, and sometimes mixed into
soils,” Nye wrote.
Searching for help, Ross approached the Environmental Protection
Agency regional office in Dallas and TCEQ. They told him they couldn’t
help; they had no jurisdiction. When Ross complained to the Railroad
Commission, he says he felt they didn’t care what he had to say about
the matter. He says he couldn’t find an attorney to take his case.
As the line of dump trucks grew, Ross became determined and decided to
take action alone. By putting enough pressure on state officials, he
hoped to force the closure of the disposal site.
“If I didn’t stick up for myself, no one was going to,” Ross says.
He sits in worn armchair in his front room, wearing carpet slippers.
His black Labrador sits at his feet as he gazes out of his window. His
house wall and the narrow asphalt road are all that separate him from
the 111-acre dump next door. He has no choice, he says, but to watch
the quagmire of brown earth and toxic waste being smeared around the
landscape by rusty bulldozers.
•
Shale gas production requires massive resources — huge swaths of land,
giant drilling rigs, countless trucks and many man-hours. Each well is
drilled using thousands of barrels of drilling mud and fluids, then
“fracked” by pumping between 1 million and 7 million gallons of
chemical-laden water to crack the rock and release the gas.
For North Texas, drilling horizontally under residential areas and the
new fracking technique means that once unobtainable gas is now up for
grabs. About 14,000 wells have been drilled in the 23 counties of the
Barnett Shale; another 3,300 have been permitted, including new
permits to drill in Hamilton County.
To deal with the solid waste, the Texas Railroad Commission
administers three types of permits for landfarms. A minor permit goes
to operations of lowest impact. The minor permit allows a single
operator to spread waste from one drilling site on a small area of
land, usually about 3 acres. A centralized landfarm, a much larger
area of land, allows an operator to spread waste for a number of its
drill sites. Both minor dumps and centralized landfarms are typically
issued permits that last for two years. A commercial landfarm can
accept waste from multiple operators and many drill sites.
Minor permits require a soil test between 30 and 90 days after
landfarming, “which limits the amount of waste spread, and include pH
and metal limitations that should protect agricultural safety,” says
Travis Baer, an engineering specialist with the Railroad Commission.
Soil toxicity testing at the landfarm is trusted to the operator
because waste disposed under minor permits is considered not
necessarily toxic.
As a result, the Railroad Commission doesn’t pursue operators if soil
tests are late, or nonexistent.
Information on minor permits obtained through an open records request
shows three regional offices taking widely different approaches in
tracking minor permits in their jurisdiction. Not all of them tracked
the number of acres affected, or the precise location. Records of soil
tests showed up on only a handful of the thousands of permits being
tracked.
The Abilene office tracks minor permits for the western counties of
the Barnett Shale, with about 188,020 barrels of waste on the books
for 2009, 216,110 barrels of waste in 2010, and 5,860 barrels so far
in 2011. The Wichita Falls office tracks the northern counties, with
about 755,300 barrels of waste on the books for the same time period.
The Kilgore office tracked exponentially more waste being dumped by
minor permit in the southern counties, about 5 million barrels in all,
with more than 4.6 million of those barrels being dumped in Tarrant
and Johnson counties.
Centralized and commercial landfarm permits are different because they
involve large volumes of waste and pose a greater potential for
pollution, according to Railroad Commission officials.
Ross estimates from the permit limits that more than 2 million gallons
of drilling mud were dumped on the landfarm next door.
Drilling fluids contain long lists of hazardous chemicals and heavy
metals. XTO’s own literature lists arsenic, lead, mercury and barium
as possible ingredients. Some chemicals are powerful carcinogens or
possibly harmful to the brain and nervous system. Others could
interfere with the development of unborn children.
David Sterling, a professor of environmental health at the University
of North Texas Health Science Center, voiced concerns about the
possibility of benzene and formaldehyde being dumped on farms, along
with “certain amounts of radioactivity increase because fracking fluid
would have been amongst heavy rock,” he said. “Depending on [the]
chemicals [present], there are different potentials for health
impacts.”
•
Bought by ExxonMobil in a $41 million, all-stock deal last year, XTO
applied to the Railroad Commission for a minor permit to landfarm on
111 acres opposite Ross in 2008.
On the application, company officials indicated that there were no
waterways or homes in the area, that adjacent landowners would be
notified and that the operation would accept only the company’s own
waste.
The company applied to spread 32,400 cubic yards of drilling cuttings
— any mud and rock displaced from the drill hole — and 120,000 barrels
of waste per year across the site. The operation would raise the
ground less than half an inch, according to the application.
The Denton Record-Chronicle attempted to interview XTO officials about
the permits. In response, company spokesman Jeffrey W. Neu sent a
written statement saying they followed state rules in obtaining the
permits from the Railroad Commission.
“We have a proud history of safe operations and are committed to
working with residents to address any concerns they have,” Neu wrote.
“Our own experience and compliance with municipal, state and federal
regulations demonstrate that our operations can be conducted safely
and in an environmentally responsible manner.”
In order to allow landfarming on such a large site, Ross learned that
state officials apparently agreed to issue 36 separate, 3-acre permits
for “cells.” Each minor permit was issued for two months at a time,
then renewed, until the landfarm reached its capacity or the time
limit was reached.
Yet, the Railroad Commission can produce records for only 16 of the 36
cells.
From 2008 to 2010, as the waste was plowed into the ground next door,
Ross watched white dust billow into the air. He worried for the health
of his goats and his horses as a fine powder settled over his house
and land, but information he needed to assess that risk was nowhere to
be found.
“I have not been able to find one soil test for the last five years
for any of the landfarms in Texas,” Ross says.
He began to spend less time with his animals. He spent four hours a
day at his desk writing e-mails and making phone calls, protesting the
dumpsite. As he invested more time in his cause, he found that the
slew of complex processes and loopholes required research.
He learned that minor permits would only allow Justin-based Chaney
Trucking to dump waste. Yet, over the life of the landfarm, Ross
photographed many other truck companies dumping in the early morning
hours.
“You don’t drive 200 miles at night to dump unless something’s wrong,”
he says.
He learned that to protest a minor permit application before it is
issued, the case must be evaluated in the Railroad Commission’s main
office in Austin.
Yet, when he tried to appeal XTO’s landfarm, he found that Railroad
Commission employee Carl Gardner, who retiredin August 2010, was
receiving and granting permit applications by e-mail within a day —
without soil tests or site inspections — leaving no time for a protest
to be launched.
He learned that minor permits were granted to XTO, yet approval
letters for the same site were also being sent to Chesapeake Energy
and Devon Energy, allowing them to spread 2,500 barrels of waste at a
time.
“It was just nonstop — there were 10 trucks at a time,” Ross says.
Eventually, state and company officials telephoned Ross to answer his
concerns.
He learned that plans were not for two years of landfarming, as stated
on the minor permits, but five years.
Even though the plans were for a landfarm of the length and scope of a
commercial project, none of the soil testing, reporting and
inspections occurred.
The Railroad Commission has since revised its guidelines so that large
areas of land cannot be dissected into cells with minor permits, Nye
said. Large areas of land require centralized permits.
•
In September 2009, Ross sent photos to state and federal officials of
huge quantities of waste and rainwater from the landfarm washing out a
section of County Road 4114 and washing into the adjoining farm.
Two weeks later, documents show Railroad Commission inspector Roger
Satterwhite went to the site to assess the runoff. Fellow employee
Chris Evers, an engineering specialist, closed the complaint with a
letter citing Statewide Rule 8, that “drilling fluid and drill
cuttings are not considered hazardous.”
When Ross contacted TCEQ to request tests of soil and air, he was told
that although they were sympathetic to his concerns about
contamination, they had no jurisdiction. Agency officials advised him
that as long as the rules of the minor permit were followed, there
should be no contamination.
“Tell them to come up here when the soil’s all white and the corn
won’t grow,” Ross recalls saying.
Ross recalls watching his neighbor Todd Kimbrell drive his big rig
past his house, and downshift to make noise. Although Ross never dealt
with him directly, he figured the intention was to scare him.
Attempts to contact Kimbrell by calling the contact phone number on
the landfarm application were unsuccessful.
“They’d get in their trucks and pretty much follow me everywhere,”
Ross says.
He received a number of letters from the Kimbrell family’s attorney,
telling him that if he didn’t stop his protests, legal action would be
taken against him.
Ross watched his neighbor plow and plant on the land immediately after
dumping had ceased, and after a year, a scarce crop of corn came up.
There are no Texas regulations governing how much time must pass
between the end of landfarming and when crops can be grown on the
site.
“Weeds wouldn’t grow on it for a year,” Ross says.
He watched as even rainwater wouldn’t seep into the soil during
drought.
Crops such as corn will not necessarily ingest and pass on
carcinogenic substances from industry waste, according to Travis
Wilson, of the Texas Agri-Life Extension Service.
However, “heavy metals from soil will certainly be taken up by plant
life,” he said.
Cadmium, lead, silver and arsenic are all listed as part of the waste
spread on the corn field next to Ross.
Ross believes his efforts paid off in getting the landfarm shut down,
although the Railroad Commission says the permits simply expired and
were not renewed in 2009.
Still, Johnson County residents contacted Ross recently. A landfarm
had been set up near them.
“I told them who to speak to and what questions to ask,” he says.
Throughout his two-year struggle, Ross had compiled a giant pile of e-
mail correspondence with various Railroad Commission staff, attorneys,
scientists and government agencies.
He was able to provide the Johnson County residents with a step-by-
step guide on how to shut down a landfarm.
“I should start charging consultancy fees,” he jokes.
He says he isn’t done yet. He plans to continue his fight against the
Railroad Commission’s lax permitting process. He describes another
landfarm close to his home that he pressed to close.
Closing two landfarms isn’t much of a victory. Ross is battling with a
regulatory agency that has permitted more than 2,300 landfarms in the
Barnett Shale region, and will continue to allow new crops of farmers
to open their gates for the tilling of toxic waste across the Texas
prairie.
below withing a mile of my home and property and within natural water
runoff areas that feed Lake Nacogdoches.
John Mayo.
VP LORA
Practice lays waste to land
08:17 AM CDT on Thursday, March 31, 2011
By Spike Johnson / For the Denton Record-Chronicle and Peggy Heinkel-
Wolfe / Staff Writer
It’s 3 a.m.
Dick Ross lies awake in bed as 18-wheelers crawl past his house. Their
headlights stream through his window. They are waiting to dump
drilling waste on a corn farm 50 feet from his front door. The
concoction is a mystery to him, except that when it blows through the
air, it strips the paint off his house.
For two years, he has fought the Texas Railroad Commission over permit
violations involving the dumpsite, submitting photos of trucks dumping
waste at all hours of the night and letters demanding that his
neighbor’s dumpsite be tested for contamination, as required by law.
His campaign to shut down the dumpsite triggered threats of litigation
from the waste haulers and a giant pile of e-mail correspondence from
commission staff, attorneys and scientists assuring him that the
dumpsite doesn’t pose any health risks.
ALSO ONLINE
Map of known locations
XTO permits
Other Hill County permits
Industry survey of waste management
Texas Railroad Commission guidelines for waste management
SERIES BREAKDOWN
With 14,000 gas wells and a maze of pipelines and production
equipment, the country’s need for a cleaner fuel conflicts with the
fast-growing cities and suburbs in 23 North Texas counties above the
Barnett Shale.
• SUNDAY: In the small town of Dish, the proliferation of gas industry
equipment is creating an atmosphere of concern.
• Atmosphere of concern
• Industry fueling region’s transformation
• Dawn Cobb: Citizens of the Shale
• MONDAY: Flower Mound, recognized for its “SmartGrowth” planning, now
grapples with the changes of a budding gas industry.
• Defending the Mound
• TUESDAY: Water, a precious resource in a high-growth state, could be
under threat by a process known as hydraulic fracturing that is used
to extract gas from deep underground.
• Just below the surface
• WEDNESDAY: As other states question hydraulic fracturing, Texas
continues the practice amid claims the state is ill-equipped to
monitor it closely. Also: A look at cement’s role in gas drilling.
• Hard work ahead
• Cement plays vital role in drilling
• TODAY: Six million people live above some 27 trillion cubic feet of
gas in the Barnett Shale, now at the center of attention among policy-
makers looking to balance the industry and North Texas lifestyles.
Also: A look at a practice known as “landfarming.”
• Striking the balance
• Attack was 'pure chaos'
Today, sitting on the wooden porch of his rural Hillsboro home in Hill
County, Ross, 64, contemplates his plans for a peaceful pursuit:
raising South African Boer goats on his small 10-acre farm.
“My advice to anyone dealing with the gas industry: Sell your whole
place, get the hell out,” Ross says. “They cheat you out of your
money, wreck your view and destroy your property value.”
Yet, even as he contemplates retirement, the former educational
supplies salesman is continuing his fight against the Railroad
Commission’s permitting process by providing guidance to others who
are protesting dumpsites in their own communities.
•
Ross and other farmers find it hard to reconcile Texans’ storied love
of the land with the growing practice of spreading tons of drilling
mud and other toxic waste across it, a process euphemistically called
“landfarming.”
As the state’s permits for natural gas drilling in the Barnett Shale
region soar, more and more parcels of the Texas prairie are being
turned into dumping grounds for disposing of the industry’s waste —
increasing the thousands of approved “landfarms” already in
existence.
About 1.2 barrels of solid waste are created with each foot drilled,
according to the American Petroleum Institute. Simply to reach the
approximate 8,000-foot depth of a Barnett Shale gas well, drilling
creates more than 9,600 barrels, or 403,200 gallons, of solid waste.
That does not take into account any horizontal drilling performed
after reaching that depth. For the 14,000 Barnett Shale wells drilled
so far, the waste would cover the entire city of Fort Worth in more
than an inch of drill cuttings, slurry, heavy metals and other toxic
compounds.
The Environmental Protection Agency is set to study much of the
lifecycle of hydraulic fracturing — the controversial process of
pressure-pumping chemical-laden water to release the gas — including
the final disposition of millions of barrels of wastewater that flows
back with the gas.
But far less attention has been paid to the tons of drilling mud and
other solids being spread across the land.
Some landowners open their gates and bank accounts to the industry’s
need to dump the waste, oblivious to environmental risks. While
official eyes are averted, permits to dump are stretched beyond their
limits. And as neighbors eye each other with increasing distrust,
millions of gallons of toxic waste are spread on the land, sometimes
overflowing into waterways, sometimes becoming airborne and blowing
across the prairie.
The 986 square miles of Hill County has around 35,000 residents. Much
of the land is owned by ranchers and farmers.
“These people believe what they’re told — that this waste is safe,”
Ross says. “Now their crops won’t grow.”
The landfarm near Ross’ home was properly permitted within the
regulations current at that time, according to Railroad Commission
spokeswoman Ramona Nye. After Ross complained to the commission, an
inspector tested the landfarm for NORM, naturally occurring
radioactive material often present in drilling waste, and found
readings “within background levels for NORM” in the soil, Nye wrote in
an e-mail.
The Railroad Commission has jurisdiction as long as the soil is on the
ground. Once dried and airborne, that’s a different matter.
The agency doesn’t have jurisdiction over air quality — that belongs
to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
•
This land is perched above the Barnett Shale, a 350 million-year-old
rock formation beneath much of North Texas. The U.S. Geological Survey
has estimated the Barnett Shale contains about 30 trillion cubic feet
of natural gas reserves. Currently the largest natural gas play in the
world, industry officials say, the Barnett Shale is a source of
significant corporate profit and the country’s natural gas
transformation.
In 2008, Ross noticed changes in his view after XTO Energy Inc.
secured permits to dump the equivalent of 35 Olympic-sized swimming
pools of drilling waste on the Kimbrell family farmland opposite his
front door.
Lines of trucks would form through the night to dump their loads,
which were later found to be outside of permit regulations. Ross made
open records requests of the Railroad Commission and found that the
daily toxicity tests for the waste, required by state rules, were
never carried out or enforced. Ross began to worry for the health of
his animals as a white dust from the landfarm opposite settled on
their grass and feed. He worried about a decline in his property
value, too.
“I could feel the air sting my skin and make my eyes burn,” Ross
says.
His complaints sparked threats of legal action. The landowner and
family living on the farm next door even followed him when he went to
town, Ross says. Trucks would sound their horns and spin their wheels
as they passed his house.
Meanwhile, permit applications for the site came into the Railroad
Commission and were approved by e-mail the next day, without a site
inspection or toxicity tests. Nothing in the process allows for public
notice, for either comment or protest, on the dumping.
Minor permits, such as a one-time, off-site dumping of water-based
drilling fluid, are good for only 60 days, Nye wrote.
“Landfarming is a method of treatment and disposal of low toxicity
wastes in which the wastes are spread upon, and sometimes mixed into
soils,” Nye wrote.
Searching for help, Ross approached the Environmental Protection
Agency regional office in Dallas and TCEQ. They told him they couldn’t
help; they had no jurisdiction. When Ross complained to the Railroad
Commission, he says he felt they didn’t care what he had to say about
the matter. He says he couldn’t find an attorney to take his case.
As the line of dump trucks grew, Ross became determined and decided to
take action alone. By putting enough pressure on state officials, he
hoped to force the closure of the disposal site.
“If I didn’t stick up for myself, no one was going to,” Ross says.
He sits in worn armchair in his front room, wearing carpet slippers.
His black Labrador sits at his feet as he gazes out of his window. His
house wall and the narrow asphalt road are all that separate him from
the 111-acre dump next door. He has no choice, he says, but to watch
the quagmire of brown earth and toxic waste being smeared around the
landscape by rusty bulldozers.
•
Shale gas production requires massive resources — huge swaths of land,
giant drilling rigs, countless trucks and many man-hours. Each well is
drilled using thousands of barrels of drilling mud and fluids, then
“fracked” by pumping between 1 million and 7 million gallons of
chemical-laden water to crack the rock and release the gas.
For North Texas, drilling horizontally under residential areas and the
new fracking technique means that once unobtainable gas is now up for
grabs. About 14,000 wells have been drilled in the 23 counties of the
Barnett Shale; another 3,300 have been permitted, including new
permits to drill in Hamilton County.
To deal with the solid waste, the Texas Railroad Commission
administers three types of permits for landfarms. A minor permit goes
to operations of lowest impact. The minor permit allows a single
operator to spread waste from one drilling site on a small area of
land, usually about 3 acres. A centralized landfarm, a much larger
area of land, allows an operator to spread waste for a number of its
drill sites. Both minor dumps and centralized landfarms are typically
issued permits that last for two years. A commercial landfarm can
accept waste from multiple operators and many drill sites.
Minor permits require a soil test between 30 and 90 days after
landfarming, “which limits the amount of waste spread, and include pH
and metal limitations that should protect agricultural safety,” says
Travis Baer, an engineering specialist with the Railroad Commission.
Soil toxicity testing at the landfarm is trusted to the operator
because waste disposed under minor permits is considered not
necessarily toxic.
As a result, the Railroad Commission doesn’t pursue operators if soil
tests are late, or nonexistent.
Information on minor permits obtained through an open records request
shows three regional offices taking widely different approaches in
tracking minor permits in their jurisdiction. Not all of them tracked
the number of acres affected, or the precise location. Records of soil
tests showed up on only a handful of the thousands of permits being
tracked.
The Abilene office tracks minor permits for the western counties of
the Barnett Shale, with about 188,020 barrels of waste on the books
for 2009, 216,110 barrels of waste in 2010, and 5,860 barrels so far
in 2011. The Wichita Falls office tracks the northern counties, with
about 755,300 barrels of waste on the books for the same time period.
The Kilgore office tracked exponentially more waste being dumped by
minor permit in the southern counties, about 5 million barrels in all,
with more than 4.6 million of those barrels being dumped in Tarrant
and Johnson counties.
Centralized and commercial landfarm permits are different because they
involve large volumes of waste and pose a greater potential for
pollution, according to Railroad Commission officials.
Ross estimates from the permit limits that more than 2 million gallons
of drilling mud were dumped on the landfarm next door.
Drilling fluids contain long lists of hazardous chemicals and heavy
metals. XTO’s own literature lists arsenic, lead, mercury and barium
as possible ingredients. Some chemicals are powerful carcinogens or
possibly harmful to the brain and nervous system. Others could
interfere with the development of unborn children.
David Sterling, a professor of environmental health at the University
of North Texas Health Science Center, voiced concerns about the
possibility of benzene and formaldehyde being dumped on farms, along
with “certain amounts of radioactivity increase because fracking fluid
would have been amongst heavy rock,” he said. “Depending on [the]
chemicals [present], there are different potentials for health
impacts.”
•
Bought by ExxonMobil in a $41 million, all-stock deal last year, XTO
applied to the Railroad Commission for a minor permit to landfarm on
111 acres opposite Ross in 2008.
On the application, company officials indicated that there were no
waterways or homes in the area, that adjacent landowners would be
notified and that the operation would accept only the company’s own
waste.
The company applied to spread 32,400 cubic yards of drilling cuttings
— any mud and rock displaced from the drill hole — and 120,000 barrels
of waste per year across the site. The operation would raise the
ground less than half an inch, according to the application.
The Denton Record-Chronicle attempted to interview XTO officials about
the permits. In response, company spokesman Jeffrey W. Neu sent a
written statement saying they followed state rules in obtaining the
permits from the Railroad Commission.
“We have a proud history of safe operations and are committed to
working with residents to address any concerns they have,” Neu wrote.
“Our own experience and compliance with municipal, state and federal
regulations demonstrate that our operations can be conducted safely
and in an environmentally responsible manner.”
In order to allow landfarming on such a large site, Ross learned that
state officials apparently agreed to issue 36 separate, 3-acre permits
for “cells.” Each minor permit was issued for two months at a time,
then renewed, until the landfarm reached its capacity or the time
limit was reached.
Yet, the Railroad Commission can produce records for only 16 of the 36
cells.
From 2008 to 2010, as the waste was plowed into the ground next door,
Ross watched white dust billow into the air. He worried for the health
of his goats and his horses as a fine powder settled over his house
and land, but information he needed to assess that risk was nowhere to
be found.
“I have not been able to find one soil test for the last five years
for any of the landfarms in Texas,” Ross says.
He began to spend less time with his animals. He spent four hours a
day at his desk writing e-mails and making phone calls, protesting the
dumpsite. As he invested more time in his cause, he found that the
slew of complex processes and loopholes required research.
He learned that minor permits would only allow Justin-based Chaney
Trucking to dump waste. Yet, over the life of the landfarm, Ross
photographed many other truck companies dumping in the early morning
hours.
“You don’t drive 200 miles at night to dump unless something’s wrong,”
he says.
He learned that to protest a minor permit application before it is
issued, the case must be evaluated in the Railroad Commission’s main
office in Austin.
Yet, when he tried to appeal XTO’s landfarm, he found that Railroad
Commission employee Carl Gardner, who retiredin August 2010, was
receiving and granting permit applications by e-mail within a day —
without soil tests or site inspections — leaving no time for a protest
to be launched.
He learned that minor permits were granted to XTO, yet approval
letters for the same site were also being sent to Chesapeake Energy
and Devon Energy, allowing them to spread 2,500 barrels of waste at a
time.
“It was just nonstop — there were 10 trucks at a time,” Ross says.
Eventually, state and company officials telephoned Ross to answer his
concerns.
He learned that plans were not for two years of landfarming, as stated
on the minor permits, but five years.
Even though the plans were for a landfarm of the length and scope of a
commercial project, none of the soil testing, reporting and
inspections occurred.
The Railroad Commission has since revised its guidelines so that large
areas of land cannot be dissected into cells with minor permits, Nye
said. Large areas of land require centralized permits.
•
In September 2009, Ross sent photos to state and federal officials of
huge quantities of waste and rainwater from the landfarm washing out a
section of County Road 4114 and washing into the adjoining farm.
Two weeks later, documents show Railroad Commission inspector Roger
Satterwhite went to the site to assess the runoff. Fellow employee
Chris Evers, an engineering specialist, closed the complaint with a
letter citing Statewide Rule 8, that “drilling fluid and drill
cuttings are not considered hazardous.”
When Ross contacted TCEQ to request tests of soil and air, he was told
that although they were sympathetic to his concerns about
contamination, they had no jurisdiction. Agency officials advised him
that as long as the rules of the minor permit were followed, there
should be no contamination.
“Tell them to come up here when the soil’s all white and the corn
won’t grow,” Ross recalls saying.
Ross recalls watching his neighbor Todd Kimbrell drive his big rig
past his house, and downshift to make noise. Although Ross never dealt
with him directly, he figured the intention was to scare him.
Attempts to contact Kimbrell by calling the contact phone number on
the landfarm application were unsuccessful.
“They’d get in their trucks and pretty much follow me everywhere,”
Ross says.
He received a number of letters from the Kimbrell family’s attorney,
telling him that if he didn’t stop his protests, legal action would be
taken against him.
Ross watched his neighbor plow and plant on the land immediately after
dumping had ceased, and after a year, a scarce crop of corn came up.
There are no Texas regulations governing how much time must pass
between the end of landfarming and when crops can be grown on the
site.
“Weeds wouldn’t grow on it for a year,” Ross says.
He watched as even rainwater wouldn’t seep into the soil during
drought.
Crops such as corn will not necessarily ingest and pass on
carcinogenic substances from industry waste, according to Travis
Wilson, of the Texas Agri-Life Extension Service.
However, “heavy metals from soil will certainly be taken up by plant
life,” he said.
Cadmium, lead, silver and arsenic are all listed as part of the waste
spread on the corn field next to Ross.
Ross believes his efforts paid off in getting the landfarm shut down,
although the Railroad Commission says the permits simply expired and
were not renewed in 2009.
Still, Johnson County residents contacted Ross recently. A landfarm
had been set up near them.
“I told them who to speak to and what questions to ask,” he says.
Throughout his two-year struggle, Ross had compiled a giant pile of e-
mail correspondence with various Railroad Commission staff, attorneys,
scientists and government agencies.
He was able to provide the Johnson County residents with a step-by-
step guide on how to shut down a landfarm.
“I should start charging consultancy fees,” he jokes.
He says he isn’t done yet. He plans to continue his fight against the
Railroad Commission’s lax permitting process. He describes another
landfarm close to his home that he pressed to close.
Closing two landfarms isn’t much of a victory. Ross is battling with a
regulatory agency that has permitted more than 2,300 landfarms in the
Barnett Shale region, and will continue to allow new crops of farmers
to open their gates for the tilling of toxic waste across the Texas
prairie.
Vicki Baggett
Apr 7, 2011, 4:49:37 PM4/7/11
to landowners-ri...@googlegroups.com
Dear LORA member,
Here's a press release for the free public viewing of Gasland on April 12, 6 p.m. at the SFA Student Recreation Center. Please contact me if you have any questions, or if you are willing to share your story (written or in person) at the event.
Thank you,
Vicki Baggett
For Immediate Release
April 7, 2011
Contact: Vicki Baggett (936)564-0179 vlba...@gmail.com
Free Public Viewing of Award-Winning Film Gasland
NACOGDOCHES- Pineywoods Sierra Group is sponsoring a free public viewing and discussion of the award winning film Gasland as part of a week-long community Earth Day celebration event coordinated by SFA Outdoor Pursuits. Variety magazine stated that “Gasland may become to the dangers of gas drilling what Silent Spring was to DDT”. Gasland will be shown on Tuesday, April 12 at 6 p.m. at the SFA Student Recreation Center. Signs will be posted at the door of the Recreation Center with directions.
The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across East Texas and the United States. The Halliburton developed drilling technology called "fracking" or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a "Saudia Arabia of natural gas" just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country road trip to find the answer to this question. A nearby Pennsylvania town which was recently drilled reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called Gasland. Part verite` travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown, Gasland is a cross country odyssey with unexpected humor, uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination.
WHAT: Public viewing and discussion of film Gasland
WHO: Community Members, Media, Elected Officials, SFA Students; all are welcome. There will be testimony from affected individuals prior to the viewing of the film.
WHEN: Tuesday, April 12th, 6 p.m.
WHERE: SFA Student Recreation Center. Directions to viewing area will be posted at door of Recreation Center.
LINKS: http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
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