If it’s headed west, it’s probably delivering saltwater drilling waste from Arkansas to be disposed of in eastern Oklahoma. If it’s going east, it’s headed back for a refill.
If you have been wondering what’s going on with the controversy over saltwater disposal, please read on.
We have printed several stories about the proposed well in Vian, as well as land application of saltwater waste around the county. Most recently the Oklahoma Corporation Commission released a report showing that from October to December 2009, over 48 million gallons of saltwater waste from Arkansas were brought into Oklahoma and injected into disposal wells.
Currently there is an application to put a well in Vian that would inject 1.6 million gallons per day and an application to put in a land farm with a large retention pond just north of Keota near Kerr Lake.
All the activity from Arkansas is rather new. Gas production from the Fayetteville Shale Basin that extends across much of north central Arkansas, from the Oklahoma state line to as far east as Batesville, Ark. began about five years ago and really heated up in just the past year.
There have been three kinds of saltwater waste applications in eastern Oklahoma: soil farming, where the waste is spread on farmland; land farming, where the saltwater is held in retention ponds; and injection disposal wells where the waste is injected into the ground.
Sequoyah County went from just eight applications of the waste on land by soil farming in the 10 years prior to 2009, to over 80 last year.
The saying, “Not in my backyard” has never rung more true. That saying is most often heard when someone wants to put a cell phone tower, a group home or something in your neighborhood that would potentially lower property values or make the living there less desirable.
But with these other “NIMBYs” there is a benefit to the neighbors – better cell phone reception, a safer place for needy residents, etc. We do not see a benefit to importing saltwater waste into eastern Oklahoma.
Heavy trucks on our highways, county roads and town streets and potential for groundwater contamination are huge costs with no associated benefit. The bonds required by Oklahoma law to insure safe, clean operation of these facilities will not come close to covering the cost to clean up a stream, relocate a school or neighborhood, and certainly not a whole town.
If you are sure we will be protected from this danger, I have two words for you: Tar Creek. The government did not protect the environment to prevent contamination and then dragged their feet while trying to move everyone out and shut down the town.
For the proposed Vian well in particular, given that Sequoyah Fuels pumped radioactive waste down a well just a few miles from Vian that ended up in drinking water wells and streams, it certainly seems possible that this would happen again. There are over 10,000 disposal wells in Oklahoma, but I doubt many are so close to schools, businesses and a former radioactive well.
From a business prospective, it appears there could be two reasons for trucks to come from Arkansas with saltwater waste for disposal. One would be that the rules for disposal are more lax in Oklahoma, but it appears this is not the case as Arkansas and Oklahoma have rules that are about equally strict. The second could be that there is no place suitable to inject the waste in Arkansas and companies are driving only as far as they must to find a disposal well. The Arbuckle formation under eastern Oklahoma could be the closest place to the Fayetteville Shale Basin to dispose of this waste by injecting it into the ground.
Then there is the question of who is actually profiting from these ventures and how good are they at following the law. There was a controversy in Arkansas last year where disposal operators violated rules, and that state temporarily halted saltwater waste disposal on Arkansas soil farms.
We may well be seeing some of those operators coming into Oklahoma, but the law does not allow the public to know any of there names or financial backers other than the “operator of record.” The operator and its backers should all be named in public records.
I think a person’s performance record in another state should follow them to Oklahoma. If you made decisions that hurt the environment in Arkansas, that should be taken into account by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission when considering applications for similar operations in our state.
Production of natural gas in the Fayetteville Shale Basin is not going away and neither are the trucks rolling down I-40. We need to keep a vigilant eye on where they stop and make sure what they are doing is safe not only for today, but for tomorrow as well.
