{"id":9621,"date":"2012-09-13T10:17:46","date_gmt":"2012-09-13T15:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=9621"},"modified":"2012-12-27T13:40:40","modified_gmt":"2012-12-27T19:40:40","slug":"companies-mining-in-aquifer-face-new-regulations-as-mill-creek-dries-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2012\/09\/13\/companies-mining-in-aquifer-face-new-regulations-as-mill-creek-dries-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Companies Mining in Aquifer Face New Regulations as Oklahoma Creek Dries Up"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Shannon Shirley lives near Ada, Okla. on 200 acres of land that depends on water from a nearby creek, which she says has been harmed by nearby limestone and sand mines.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Shannon Shirley\u2019s land along Mill Creek is rich in natural resources: Massive granite boulders worn to their current shape after millions of years of erosion, a carpet of limestone and the creek they\u2019ve relied on for water for more than 15 years. She now calls that stream \u2018dysfunctional.\u2019<\/p>

\u201cWe bring in water as a backup source because you never know,” she says. “Day-to-day the levels change.”<\/p>

And she blames the mining operations<\/a> just upstream from her house.<\/p>

<\/p>

\u201cWhen you mine the rock that they\u2019re mining \u2014 they\u2019re mining limestone and silica sand. And when you mine that, you encounter water just as a natural process of mining it, because this stuff is in water,\u201d Shirley says. \u201cSo water becomes a byproduct of mining and you\u2019ve got to get it out of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Water for Shannon Shirley's home is pumped out of Mill Creek, which is fed by Oklahoma's ecologically sensitive Arbuckle-Simpson Aquifer. Click for a larger version.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Mining operations can build storage ponds or pump excess water into the creek, but Shirley says many simply dump it onto the ground. Richard Szecsy, of the Texas Aggregates and Concrete Association<\/a>, says that\u2019s bad business and companies should recycle the water, but that it\u2019s hard to put the blame for lower stream levels on mining during a major drought.<\/p>

\u201cThese are those obvious facts, that\u2019s kind of like, \u2018did anyone think of that?\u2019 No! It\u2019s the quarry. The quarry\u2019s bad. Well, hello, we\u2019ve been in a drought for two and a half years,\u201d Szecsy says.<\/p>

Either way, Shirley can\u2019t rely on Mill Creek for drinking water anymore. She\u2019s worried that Mill Creek is the canary in the limestone mine for municipalities that rely on other streams and lakes fed by the Arbuckle-Simpson Aquifer.<\/p>

\u201cMill Creek will be the first to go. And then it\u2019ll be a domino,\u201d Shirley says. \u201cSprings are at the top of the aquifer. As you lower the level of the aquifer, you take the water away from the springs. And Mill Creek is ground zero for that. And then comes Pennington, which is less than a mile away. And then comes Rock Creek, and this way, toward Ardmore, their lake is spring fed. Sulphur, at the park, they have spring fed creeks.\u201d<\/p>

[module align=”right” width=”half” type=”pull-quote”]<\/p>

\u201cMill Creek will be the first to go. And then it\u2019ll be a domino,\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Shannon Shirley, Mill Creek area homeowner and member of Citizens for the Protection of the Arbuckle-Simpson Aquifer<\/h6>

[\/module]<\/p>

Shirley is a member of Citizens for the Protection of the Arbuckle-Simpson Aquifer<\/a>, which in 2011 pushed a bill to regulate the water removed by mining operations. The new rules go into effect in January. Companies applying for mining permits in the aquifer after August 1st<\/sup> of last year will have to report how much water they\u2019re removing and submit a plan to recycle it.<\/p>

State Representative Todd Thomsen (R-Ada) co-authored the bill<\/a> and says it\u2019s just common sense.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Shannon Shirley points out a dry portion of Mill Creek a few miles downstream from her home.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\u201cWe have a lot of natural resources \u2026and that natural resource happens to right on top of that aquifer. There\u2019s a great concern with the use of that water and the depletion of that aquifer and how it\u2019s going to impact \u2014 because there are so many in that area that directly use that aquifer,\u201d Thomsen says. \u201cSo, there\u2019s great interest in how much those mines are potentially taking as they do their mining operation. And up until the point of that legislation, there had really been no formal reporting and monitoring of that.\u201d<\/p>

The August 1st<\/sup> 2011 deadline caused an unusual amount of activity at what is usually a quiet state agency.<\/p>

\u201cWe had about half a dozen who came in the last week of July 2011,\u201d Bret Sholar, with the Oklahoma Department of Mines<\/a> says.<\/p>

He says current operations will only have to abide by the reporting part of the new law, and it\u2019ll be up to the companies to file those reports. Even though these new rules go into effect in January, they\u2019re still being worked out at the Oklahoma Water Resources Board.<\/a><\/p>

\u201cWe\u2019re going to come up on January 2013 here pretty soon, and these people are going to start doing these monitoring plans,\u201d Sholar says. \u201cNo one knows how. How\u2019s it going to be funded? What do they do?\u201d<\/p>

The mining companies clearly don\u2019t want to have to deal with the new rules. Since last year\u2019s deadline, the state mining department has received zero new applications to enter the aquifer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shannon Shirley\u2019s land along Mill Creek is rich in natural resources: Massive granite boulders worn to their current shape after millions of years of erosion, a carpet of limestone and the creek they\u2019ve relied on for water for more than 15 years. She now calls that stream \u2018dysfunctional.\u2019\u201cWe bring in water as a backup source […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":9679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491,301,16],"tags":[429,428,448,447,93],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9621"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9726,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9621\/revisions\/9726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}