Public concerned over gas industry-proposed pits

“They’ll say whatever they need to to get this done and make some money”

At a public hearing of two separate proposals to build huge “flowback” pits to support natural gas development in the North Fork Valley on Friday, June 10, a small but vocal opposition filled a few seats in the audience to show that not everyone saw the pits as big an opportunity as the gas companies do.

The proposals—by the county’s two largest gas producers, Gunnison Energy Corporation and SG Interests I Ltd.—ask the county for its blessing to build the pits to hold “produced water” that comes out of a well bore at different stages of natural gas production.
GEC engineering manager Phil Nicoll said, “We’ll still have to haul in water but it will be a tenth of what it used to be… Without the pits, there would be hundreds—600 or so—[truck] trips estimated in the completion of a well.” There would also be trips to supplement the materials and haul equipment.
Although Gunnison Energy’s operation doesn’t use county roads and SG’s use is minimal, reducing the number of truck trips necessary to service a well was a key part of the rationale for the pits. More important for the commissioners, however, is the potential for the pits to leak or lose their contents another way, contaminating land and water with a solution whose components could have long-lasting impacts on the environment.
“When we designed this, we designed it with those concerns in mind.” GEC director of environment and permitting Lee Fyock said.
While there are differences between the pits GEG and SG are proposing, both complexes, once carved into the ground, come within 20 feet of groundwater sources. According to both companies, the ground water is stagnant and accumulated through surface water seeping down, but it’s there nonetheless.
The same process of seepage is what some people fear will lead to the contamination of the water if the pits are installed.
That, among other things, led High Country Citizens’ Alliance public lands director Matt Reed to speak out in opposition to the proposals as he has done regularly during the review process.
“Ultimately I remain extremely uncomfortable with [the location] for this,” Reed said of GEC’s proposal. “I understand the prevention mechanisms. When you look at the proposal it’s just a half-mile from an inventoried roadless area and a couple of miles from Paonia reservoir. These pits will be capable of holding 56 acre-feet of toxic fluids… I don’t know if there’s anything that can be done about that. But should there be a catastrophic failure it could mean disaster for the people down stream.
“I’m baffled that the regs allow for a pit of this size to be sited where it is,” he said.
Zoe Fryer, a former Western State student who has taken up the fight for stricter control of the natural gas industry, pointed out that industry, as proud of and as confident in the methods being used as it is, isn’t shy about admitting that pit liners leak.
“If we are going to welcome [gas development] even more into the county then I ask that we explore alternative technologies,” Fryer said. “Truly new technologies are coming on all the time and if some of them will keep the most harmful material out of the environment then we should make sure these companies are using them.”
For other people, the hearing was a chance to comment on more than just the proposals to dig open-air pits several acres in size. It was a hearing of the industry itself and a call to question the place natural gas development has in the county, and things the commissioners might just think about.
Longtime Gunnison County resident Butch Clark has many of the same concerns as others in the room and other concerns no one had mentioned previously in a public meeting.
“I’m quite interested in the prospect of the bacteria that is being brought up. We don’t know what it is oftentimes and we could be quite surprised,” Clark said. “Bacteria can also come back up with water from the well.”
The pits, if approved, will also usher in a new era in natural gas development in the North Fork Valley, where wells now are vertical and only fractured in a few stages or as many as five. With the amount of water available in the pits, gas companies will be able to support 15 or 20 fractures of a single well. The wells with so many sections, or stages, are drilled horizontally through the gas-containing layer of rock, not just vertically into it.
When asked by commissioner Warren Wilcox how many wells one pad will be able to support once horizontal drilling becomes common, GEC president Brad Robinson said, “I’d be disappointed if it were less than six.”
With so much potential for growth riding on the approval of the pit proposals, both companies are eager to get the pits started this summer.
But Nic Easley, who told the commissioners he had been a student at Western State and worked at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory and on several organic farms in the North Fork Valley, said for an industry with a “history of contamination, with exemptions from all of our major environmental protection laws” the additional interest and advancing technology is all the more reason to regulate it closely or shut it down all together.
Easley reminded the commissioners that SG is currently suing the county over its regulation of the gas industry.
“They’re going to use all these scare tactics to say that our people from our town who are standing up for ourselves, we don’t have the right to do that because the state has already been paid off and isn’t regulating anything, so the little guys in the little town shouldn’t,” Easley said.
Speaking of the fracking fluid that gets trapped in the rock or hydrocarbons that come to the surface with produced water, Easley asked, “Then where does it go? It goes away to this magical land where all of these byproducts are going to go to. But if you go to the landfill or you go downstream of these places, the land of away is here and now.
“That’s why it’s our responsibility as citizens of this watershed and high places that when an industry comes in we really question it fully,” continued Easley. “We need to ask tough questions until they prove, not that it’s probably going to be okay, but until they are absolutely one hundred percent certain that these [instances of contamination] cannot happen… They will lie to you to make money. Anything they will tell you is a lie just to get your approval. They’ll say whatever they need to to get this done and make some money.”
Both public hearings were continued and no action was taken at the meetings. To share your thoughts on the proposed flowback pits, contact the community development department at planning@gunnisoncounty.org