The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
County needs more info before they say okay
Gunnison Energy Corporation (GEC) and SG Interests I Ltd. (SG), two of the most active natural gas producers around the North Fork Valley, have both submitted proposals to the county to build central containment ponds to hold the water and hydraulic fracturing fluids needed in the development of a growing number of gas wells.
The pits Gunnison Energy is proposing would serve the 16 wells that are permitted in the surrounding four-square-mile area and any that are developed in the future.
“This facility is meant to service all wells in the area. There could be 50 wells, we don’t know,” GEC president Brad Robinson told the commissioners at a review of the proposals on Friday, April 29. “We’re talking about that four square miles no matter how many wells it ends up being. You can bet we don’t want to build any more of these than we absolutely have to.”
SG’s proposal includes two separate facilities with two pits apiece, capable of holding more than 1.6 million gallons in the smallest of the pits and as much as 7.4 million gallons in the two largest pits, known as the McIntyre Pits 3 and 4. Those pits, along with the smaller McIntyre Pits 1 and 2, will serve the water containment needs for the entire 32-square-mile Bull Mountain Unit.
According to both companies, the pits will limit the amount of truck traffic going to each well pad and improve the ability for the well operators to store water, whether it’s being pumped into the well or out of it.
After a well has been drilled, water comes pumping out of the earth. Known as produced water, the briny groundwater that is trapped in the rock comes rushing to the surface in varying quantities and qualities.
From the wells being drilled into layers of shale, as little as a few barrels of water might come out every day. In the wells drilled into the coal bed, producers might get five barrels a minute.
The facility GEC is proposing will be connected to the well pads and the disposal well via six-inch pipeline already buried more than three feet underground. SG’s plan will require a poly gas pipe to be installed on the ground’s surface.
The pits would also be used to store hydraulic fracturing—or “fracking”—fluid, the mixture of produced water and sometimes-nasty chemicals that are pumped down holes under intense pressure to soften and fracture the rock.
“As it turns out, that water is good for our [fracking] process, so we want to use it, reuse it and maybe use it again,” GEC director of environmental and permitting Lee Fyock explained of the “produced” water, which is used to dilute the concentrated fracking fluid.
With public concerns rising about the potential for the additives in fracking fluid to contaminate surface or ground water sources—and eventually drinking or irrigation water—and so much riding on the performance of one facility, GEC enlisted the help of Weston Solutions, a Colorado-based company that claims experience in designing retention ponds in environments around the world, in designing the pits.
“We’re building a hazardous waste pit for all practical purposes and that’s how it’s being designed,” Fyock added.
At the review of GEC’s proposal, Weston representatives gave a presentation on the way GEC’s pits would look and operate, passing around a sample of the three layers that would make up the pit’s liner. Each 22-foot-wide piece would be rolled out on top of soft soil before being welded together and monitored for the smallest leak, Weston reps said.
“Liners do leak and they will,” Weston geologist Dan Brennick told the commissioners. “The system is designed for mitigation.” Brennick also addressed the concerns about the possible contamination of groundwater, saying “When people ask about the possibility that the [water in the pits] will reach the aquifer, I can say with certainty that 99.99999 percent of the time, the answer is no.”
But monitoring at the facility will be beefed up in case there ever is a release, as this is no ordinary pit. While more conventional on-site pits used in gas drilling might take up an acre or two, the facilities being considered by the County Planning Commission would hold two large pits with an area many times that size, surrounded by netting and a tall fence.
Most of the design elements like fences and netting are standards in the current Gunnison County Regulations for Oil and Gas Development, which is the regulation the pits are being reviewed under.
SG will build its facilities on its own Rock Creek Ranch away from any water bodies. The site that has been chosen a few miles northwest of Paonia Reservoir where GEC is proposing to build its pits on the Hotchkiss Ranch is 3,000 feet from the nearest water body, West Muddy Creek. Once the pits are in place, little else will change on the ground.
“What we’re really talking about here in terms of the wells not doing anything differently. We’re going to use our produced water to frack the wells,” Robinson said. “What we’re talking about is building a larger, better designed, environmentally safeguarded water storage pit to facilitate the future fracks.”
The idea of such a large open-air pit caused some concern for commission chairman Ramon Reed, who asked about the potential for an impact to air quality, referencing the recently released report by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
The report found, among other things, “The most widely used chemical in hydraulic fracturing during this time period [2005 to 2009], as measured by the number of compounds containing the chemical, was methanol. Methanol, which was used in 342 hydraulic fracturing products, is a hazardous air pollutant and is on the candidate list for potential regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act…”
Reed was told that he had already requested, and was given, all of the documents related to air quality control that are required by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. But he, and other commissioners, had other questions and the discussion was set to continue on Friday, May 6.
