Drilling allowed under reservoir
City reverses course, but environmentalists warn drinking water threatened
Officials OK with drilling under Choke Canyon, which supplies Corpus Christi’s water.
A new round of oil and gas leasing underneath the Choke Canyon Reservoir is raising the ire of environmental groups, but local officials say they are satisfied drilling won’t pose a threat to the source of drinking water for Corpus Christi and surrounding communities.
That view marks a reversal from a year ago when the city of Corpus Christi filed protests against oil and gas leasing underneath Choke Canyon. Mark Van Vleck, Corpus Christi’s assistant city manager, said that at that time, the city had questions about how the federal government, which is leasing the mineral rights, would protect water quality and which restrictions would be imposed on drilling.
Among the answers city officials received: The wells would be drilled so far below the reservoir that they wouldn’t threaten the water supply.
“We met with the various agencies and talked through what our concerns were and they addressed them all,” Van Vleck said.
The Bureau of Land Management,
“I don’t think we should take that kind of risk.” Luke Metzger of Environment Texas
which administers mineral rights under Choke Canyon, is leasing 4,200 acres of mineral rights under the reservoir. Drilling operations would take place away from the reservoir, and would involve horizontal drilling to tap oil and gas.
The auction is set for early December and comes more than a year after the bureau leased another 1,600 acres underneath the reservoir.
Oil and gas drilling has taken place in the area since the 1920s, according to Bureau of Reclamation emails provided by Wendy Park, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona environmental advocacy group. Dozens of new wells have been drilled since the Eagle Ford Shale oil and gas field was discovered in 2008.
Prior to the filling of the Choke Canyon Reservoir, 93 wells were active and 330 had been plugged and abandoned, according to an email from the Bureau of Reclamation.
Park said that operating logs from the Bureau of Reclamation show that the bureau had checked on at least three plugged oil wells that appeared to be seeping. The logs show that the inspector at the well sites did not see bubbling in the lake at the site of the wells, which can be an indication of a leak.
One concern is that fluids from new oil and gas drilling could travel into old wells in the reservoir, allowing the fluids to migrate from deep underground and leak into the lake, contaminating drinking water, Park said.
City Councilwoman Debbie Lindsey-Opel said the Bureau of Land Management ultimately controls the minerals underneath the reservoir and she believes that industry standards are sufficient to protect the reservoir from contamination.
Before companies can drill, the Bureau of Land Reclamation, which manages the reservoir and dam, must consent and can send a list of stipulations to the Bureau of Land Management, said Rebecca Hunt, a natural resource specialist in the BLM’s New Mexico office.
One such stipulation is that the oil and gas company fund a risk analysis of the potential impact on the dam or reservoir. Another restricts oil and gas operations from taking place within 2,000 feet of structures such as the dam, spillway and embankment.
But Luke Metzger, director of the advocacy group Environment Texas, said recent issues in Austin, where torrential rains produced overwhelming volumes of silt that shut down water treatment plants and forced residents to boil water, shows the vulnerability of drinking water supplies. A leak of chemicals used in fracking and drilling would pose graver dangers, he said.
“When we’re talking a drinking water supply for thousands of people, I don’t think we should take that kind of risk,” Metzger said.