Turtle Bayou a small success in otherwise growing problem
Oil field project plugs abandoned wells, cleans up contamination
Turtle Bayou, between Houston and Beaumont, was like many abandoned oil fields in Texas, with alligators, bald eagles and bobcats coexisting with unplugged oils and the threat of spills and the contamination of soil and water.
But today, those threats have been largely eliminated at the 511-acre nature preserve after a six-year project to plug the abandoned wells and clean up the contamination, financed with grants of more than $1 million from the Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees the state’s oil and gas industry. The restored preserve reopened to public just over a week ago, becoming a much safer place to hike, kayak and observe a rich mixture of wildlife that call the wetlands, prairie and forest home.
“It allows us to have peace of mind,” said Matt Singer with the Galveston Bay Foundation, a nonprofit that studies and monitors wetlands surrounding Galveston Bay. “There is not going to be a gas leak or an oil spill out there.”
Turtle Bayou is a small success in what otherwise has become a growing problem in Texas as the oil bust and stubbornly low prices have forced struggling companies to abandon more wells. The seven oil wells capped and cleaned up at Turtle Bayou are a tiny fraction of the nearly 10,000 abandoned wells, known as orphans, that the Railroad Commission must pay to plug around the state.
Regulators face cleanup costs that could soar as high as $165 million, according to one state report, and continue to grow as low oil prices pressure drillers.
The Turtle Bayou Nature Preserve is part of the Turtle Bayou Oil Field, which was discovered in 1952, along Lake Anahuac between Houston and Beaumont. The nature preserve was once private land and the possible site of a water treatment plant until the local navigation district, whooversees the area’s waterways, bought it with the help of grant money, said Linda Shead, whose consulting company, Shead Conservation Solutions, wrote grant applications to help acquire the land.
The Galveston Bay Foundation holds a conservation easement on Turtle Bayou, caring for the property on behalf of the navigation district.
Turtle Bayou’s wells were given a higher priority because of their potential impact on public safety, because Lake Anahuac, a drinking water source for the city of Anahuac, is downstream from Turtle Bayou. With the support of the Railroad Commission, the Chambers-Liberty Counties Navigation District, which owns the 511-acre preserve, launched the effort to protect water quality, which includes a series of monitoring wells to provide early warning if contaminants are moving into the water table.
Federal and state funds financed the cleanup, with most coming from the Railroad Commission’s Oil and Gas Regulation and Cleanup Fund, a pot of money filled by fees taken from the oil and gas industry.
The commission also used $176,300 from its Brownfield Response Program and a five-year $500,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to clean up abandoned oil and gas sites.