The field behind Robert Cervenka’s ranch in the small town of Riesel, Texas is scattered with historic equipment. There are horse-drawn plows and pickup trucks from bygone eras. Want to know what a 1954 John Deer tractor looks like? He’ll be happy to oblige. Cervenka’s been ranching since he was eight years old.
And now he’s eighty-one. “At my age I don’t want to buy any new tractors or anything,” he says, chuckling.
But not everything here is antique. A few years ago, much to his chagrin, Cervenka got a brand new coal-fired power plant as a neighbor, right next door to his ranch. The Sandy Creek Power Station was set to produce 925 megawatts of electricity for this energy hungry state, enough to power an estimated 900,000 homes. The chimney from the plant rises 360 feet in the air, higher than the Taj Mahal.
Cervenka opposed it, but in the end he watched from his field as it was built, and watched as plumes of steam and smoke first rose from it last fall. “They were what’s called cooking the boilers,” he recalls. “They were heating them up and making steam and trying to blow out all the pipes and tubing that may had welders slag or tools or anything in the pipes. And then one day, all of a sudden, it quit.”
It’s still not clear exactly what happened at the plant the day it quit on Oct. 17th last year. Continue Reading →
Trailers housing drill workers line a city park in Gonzales
Rancher Tim Pennell says you need only look out the window in DeWitt County to see what “fracking” has brought to the gently rolling terrain of South Texas.
“If you want to work, you come to DeWitt County and you can damn sure get a job,” said Pennell.
Fracking is helping create a gusher of jobs as evidenced by the the line of oil field workers at a barbecue stand that operates along the road next to Pennell’s house. A few hundred yards away, a drilling rig is running 24/7.
But all the trucks servicing the drilling rigs are ripping up the roads. And there is concern over how the fracking process is using enormous amounts of groundwater during a record drought. Continue Reading →
The extreme drought has lowered levels in Lake Travis, exposing formations not seen for some time.
It sounds strange to say it, but Spicewood Beach is running out of water.
The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) released an advisory today to communities in the Spicewood Beach Regional Water System in Burnet County asking customers “to immediately cut back on all nonessential water use.”
Despite being adjacent to the Lower Colorado River, the wells serving the communities in the Spicewood Beach water system “are quickly approaching their minimum operating levels,” the advisory states. “At this time, based on the accelerated rate of drop in the well level, it is estimated that the wells have approximately two to three weeks of supply remaining.”
The LCRA is currently trucking in water to a storage tank in order to keep water flowing, and is looking at drilling new wells or possibly making existing wells deeper. Continue Reading →
Since then, things have turned around for Groesbeck. In late November, the town announced that they had literally bought a few more months of water by installing a three-mile pipeline further up the Navasota river, where the town’s water comes from. They even moved to Stage 2 water restrictions, which allows residents to water their lawns.
Last week the latest place to come dangerously close to running dry was Robert Lee, a West Texas town with a little over a thousand people about two hours east of Midland. Their sole source  of water is the E.V. Spence Reservoir, which is currently only 0.44 percent full.
Today comes news that salvation has arrived, in the form of a “10-inch, light blue plastic pipe,” according to the Abilene Reporter-News: Continue Reading →
Burros marched, pipelines were delayed, and wells caught fire. In case you missed it, here are the five top posts from StateImpact Texas over the last week:
Then, there’s the slow burn. It’s the news story that doesn’t initially inspire much interest, but gradually attracts a steady amount of traffic. It’s the tortoise in the race.
Recently, the tortoise has been a Tiger Prawn.
When I first reported on the arrival of foot-long Asian Tiger Prawns in the Gulf of Mexico, fewer readers took noticed than I had hoped. But over time, the piece has provoked some comments and continued to attract visitors. For all of you concerned or curious about this invasive species and it’s impact on the Gulf ecosystem, here are several theories of how the prawn first established itself in the Gulf of Mexico:
Thanks, South Carolina. In 1988, an accident at an fish farming facility in South Carolina inadvertently released pond-raised tiger prawns into the ocean where they were caught off shore for years afterward. “Like a lot of introduced species, they got out, everybody was concerned, but nature took its course and we never saw them after 91,” says Texas Parks and Wildlife Leslie Hartman, “until again after 2006.” Hartman is participating in genetic testing to see if the Tiger Prawns that are now showing up in shrimping nets in the Gulf could be related to those South Carolinian escapees. Continue Reading →
“A Railroad Commission inspector responded around 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19, to a storage tank fire at a saltwater disposal facility operated by High Roller Well, LLC, south of Pearsall on State Highway 581, south of Pearsall. Preliminary information provided to the inspector indicates that while a truck was unloading saltwater with a skim of condensate (liquid hydrocarbons) into a collection tank, welders were working nearby and sparks from the welding may have ignited vapors around the storage tank, causing the explosion. A firewall around the storage tank site contained spilled fluids, which were picked up with by a vacuum truck.
No violations of RRC rules were found, and the High Roller Well LLC lease is in compliance with Commission rules. As injuries were reported in this incident, the lead investigating agency for this incident would be the federal agency, OSHA, which needs to be contacted for further information.”
Photo by Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica (Creative Commons)
Louis Meeks’ well water contains methane gas, hydrocarbons, lead and copper, according to the EPA’s test results.
Today the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it is extending the period for public comment on its investigation of water contamination linked to fracking in Wyoming. The report was released in draft form in December and drew attention across the country, especially in Texas. It was the first time the EPA had linked fracking to water contamination. While the initial public comment period for the report was going to close at the end of January, that deadline has now been extended until March 12.
Earlier this week the EPA began accepting nominations for scientists to peer review the water contamination study. That process will be open until February 17.
The EPA is also “investigating potential impacts from oil and gas drilling at a number of places across the U.S.,” an agency spokesperson told StateImpact Texas in December. They are looking at seven other case studies as part of an ongoing scientific investigation. One of those case studies is on the Barnett Shale in Denton, Texas. The EPA is investigating the possibility of well contamination and spills and runoff there.
April 25, 2012 UPDATE: This week OSHA issued ten citations for “serious violations” by High Roller Wells, which operates the disposal well. You can read more about those citations here.Â
Three people have been injured after an explosion and fire at a disposal well in Pearsall, Texas Thursday night. The site is used for disposal of fracking fluids from the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, about 50 miles from San Antonio.* The fire burned for several hours and was put out by 9 p.m. last night. It isn’t clear yet what caused the explosion. (The Railroad Commision of Texas, which oversees drilling in the state, later released a statement explaining the explosion. You can read it below.)
Update: StateImpact Texas spoke with Pearsall Volunteer Fire Department Chief Placido Aguilar today about the fire. He said that at about 5:30 p.m. Thursday an oil tank exploded and caught fire. It took about an hour and a half to get under control once firefighters arrived. “There were four departments from around here, twelve trucks, and 33 guys that helped with the fire,” he told StateImpact Texas. He said that the fire department had to cool down three tanks holding oil so they wouldn’t reignite.
Aguilar says the site uses hydraulic fracturing to drill for oil.* “There was a well running when we got there that had to be shut down,” Aguilar said. “I know it’s producing, [because] they had three tanks full of oil. That one that exploded lost its top and was on fire.” (Update: These earlier reports appear to be wrong. The site is used for disposal of wastewater from fracking and drilling, according to the Railroad Commission of Texas. Read the statement from the Railroad Commission of Texas on the explosion here.)
With drilling taking off in the Eagle Ford Shale, is Aguilar concerned that his all-volunteer department will have to respond to more fires like these? “Yes, probably in the last six months we’ve had two other incidents. And they [drillers] say they’re gonna be here for a while.” Continue Reading →
While the chemicals were not “definitively linked to recent gas drilling,” they write, the EPA says they do pose “a chronic health risk.” Now the EPA is going to truck in water to the four families. There’s quite a bit of background to the story, which you can read at StateImpact Pennsylvania. (They also have a fantastic interactive map of the many wells in the state.)
The company behind the well in question is Cabot Oil and Gas, which is based in Houston and has a major presence drilling the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas.
In a separate case, a couple in Parker County, outside of Fort Worth, are currently suing a drilling company, Range Resources, for contaminating their water well. Continue Reading →
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