Railroad Commission critic vows to keep flying drone
Test results show the water could be contaminating freshwater aquifers and may be washing out rock salt
Water that has been erupting from an unidentified well in Crane County for six weeks contains dangerous levels of the carcinogen benzene and salt levels far greater than those found in the ocean, testing by the Texas Railroad Commission showed.
The flow, first identified Dec. 7, is among the latest incidents of old wells bursting to the surface and potentially polluting protected aquifers. The toxic Crane County flow continues to gush to the surface, according to an aerial image said to be captured Jan. 18 by Sarah Stogner, a vocal Railroad Commission critic who pledged to keep flying her drone despite a Federal Aviation Administration no-fly zone established at the commission’s request.
The test results, obtained by the Chronicle through a public records request, show the underground water blowout in Crane County could be contaminating freshwater aquifers and also may be washing out a layer of rock salt under the soil, which is how sinkholes are formed.
It’s the latest sign of trouble under the aging oil fields just north of Fort Stockton, where water under pressure can travel underground — at times carrying radioactive elements, chemicals and other oil field waste — until it finds the path of least resistance to the surface, often an unplugged well, and bursts to the surface.
Stogner cites the need for transparency regarding this threat to public health as the reason she won’t follow the federal flight restriction granted by the FAA.
“It’s the First Amendment. I’m going to exercise my First Amendment rights and I’m prepared to defend them,” Stogner said Tuesday. “If we don’t get this right, we collapse the Texas economy and we don’t have potable water.”
The Railroad Commission did not reply to a request for comment. It previously said it requested the no-fly zone, which has been extended through June, after a drone was flying “dangerously close” to crews working to stem the uncontrolled flow of water.
Testing by the RRC, conducted last month, revealed benzene levels in the water roughly 10 times higher than regulatory thresholds for contamination of protected aquifers.The water also contains around 327,000 milligrams per liter of total dissolved salt solids, according to the commission’s test, roughly nine times saltier than average seawater.
Brine that salty kills plants and de
stroys the soil, and the high salinity suggests “it may have had some mixing” with a salt layer beneath the surface, said Raymond L. Straub Jr., a West Texas geoscientist and groundwater scientist. Straub said benzene levels in the water also tell him the water has been exposed to hydrocarbons.
“The potential is pretty good” that this super-salty water is contaminating protected aquifers beneath the surface, he said.
Ty Edwards, general manager of the nearby Middle Pecos Groundwater Control District, said he has “no doubt” about whether the toxic water is mingling with protected waters. “It’s coming out of the ground everywhere over there,” he said. “They’ve got a serious problem.”
The water flowing to the surface in Crane County also bears a striking chemical resemblance to the water that exploded into a hundred-foot geyser two years ago, roughly 400 yards away, according to a comparison analysis conducted by
Straub.
“You can see that their water chemistries are pretty similar,” he said. “We don’t have all the answers, but analytically they appear like they’re similar sourcewater.”
Bill Burch, a drilling engineer and well control expert who is running for a seat on the Railroad Commission, said the presence of benzene tells him “it has to be coming from produced water,” the industry term
for oil field wastewater.
Burch said the extremely high salinity of the water suggests that the uncontrolled flow is washing out the Salado formation, a layer of rock salt underpinning a large swath of
West Texas soil. If the flow wipes the layer out, a sinkhole could form.
“It changes the topography,” he said. “It’s moving that salt to surface. This is the future we’re setting up.”