Dave Fehling is the Houston-based broadcast reporter for StateImpact. Before joining StateImpact Texas, Dave reported and anchored at KHOU-TV in Houston. He also worked as a staff correspondent for CBS News from 1994-1998. He now lectures on journalism at the University of Houston.
Big freighters and small barges in the Houston Ship Channel near the site of the collision
U. S. Coast guard investigators are reviewing testimony they heard during a four-day hearing held last week in Galveston. They’re trying to learn what might have prevented the collision of a freighter with a barge carrying fuel oil in March. Some of what they heard points a finger right back at the Coast Guard.
Along Galveston Bay, the big collision is still fresh in the minds of people who have a front row seat to the very busy Houston Ship Channel. John McMichael is a retired Navy submarine officer who manages Seawolf park on Pelican Island.
“They knew they were there. They were on the radar. It’s hard to fathom that it would have happened in today’s world,” McMichael told StateImpact Texas.
Oil field workers wear these safety alert devices that detect hydrogen sulfide gas
Hydrogen sulfide — a gas that smells like rotten eggs — can be insidious in its lethality. Its odor will be unmistakeable to its victim. But the gas can quickly numb the sense of smell, leading to the belief that the threat has passed. Unconsciousness and death can follow.
“Unfortunately, if you come in contact with hydrogen sulfide there are not a lot of second chances,” said Sheldon McKee, director of business development at AMGAS, a Canadian company that makes equipment to remove hydrogen sulfide in the oilfields, where it can be a deadly risk for workers.
AMGAS opened an office last year in San Antonio to serve what the company sees as a growing need. Drilling for oil has surged just south of San Antonio in a swath of rural counties that comprise the Eagle Ford Shale. It’s an area known for what’s called “sour gas:” natural gas and crude oil with high amounts of hydrogen sulfide. Sour gas can also be found in parts of West Texas and in East Texas.
With oil and gas drilling booming, so are the number of wells used for wastewater, growing by about a thousand a year since 2009. There are now over 35,000 disposal and injection wells in Texas according to the Railroad Commission.
The wells are used to get rid of the millions of gallons of chemically-tainted wastewater and produced water from oil & gas drilling. The waste is pumped deep underground, far below the aquifers holding water used by cities and ranches.
Mottled ducks in pond at Brazoria National WIldlife Refuge in Brazoria County
It can be tough being a duck these days in Texas. Next door in Louisiana, they’ve got cable TV’s big reality hit, Duck Dynasty. But in Texas, there’s less a dynasty and more of a dilemma, at least for one breed called the Mottled Duck.
“If you look at the composite of things they all suggest that in Texas, mottled ducks are declining,” said Bart Ballard. “Louisiana seems to be stable.”
Ballard is a scientist at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M-Kingsville. He said estimating duck populations can be tricky. But according to a 2009 report for the U.S. Geological Survey, an analysis off data from 2005-2009 suggested “a rapidly declining mottled duck population” in Texas.
Traffic accidents have surged along with drilling in Texas counties.
In what were some of the poorer counties in Texas, a surge in oil & gas drilling has set local economies on fire. But at the same time, officials have made dire pleas for help, saying the drilling boom is destroying roads and leading to deadly crashes.
The Associated Press found that while traffic deaths are down statewide in Texas, they’re up 18 percent in counties with lots of drilling.
“Unfortunately, one of the biggest growing pains and consequences of all this activity has been the increased number of fatalities that have taken place in these areas. We need to work on these roads, make them wider, make them safer,” said State Sen. Carlos Uresti (D-San Antonio), who represents some of the most oil-rich counties.
Jackie Young at San Jacinto River Superfund site tells why local lawsuits are important in our Radio Story
After being the target of intense lobbying that drew criticism in last year’s Texas legislature, lawmakers will again hear why big business wants restrictions on local governments that go after polluters in court. The House Judiciary Committee will take up the issue at a hearing May 16th.
Bills to curtail pollution lawsuits by local governments died in the last legislative session.
“I wasn’t surprised to see it still out there. There’s an effort to limit cities and actually it’s been going on for several years now,” said Bennett Sandlin, Executive Director of the Texas Municipal League.
Alaska funds its state government largely by taxing oil production. But last year, faced with dwindling production, the legislature narrowly passed tax cuts to lessen the burden on energy companies in hopes of encouraging more drilling and generating more tax revenue.
One Alaska lawmaker said they looked to the Lower 48 for inspiration.
“Because we kept hearing all the booming oil work that is being done in Texas and North Dakota and people said hey, that just goes to show you, Texas has a lower tax rate. And that just goes to show you how increased taxes are causing less exploration and development here in Alaska,” said Alaska State Sen. Bill Wielechowski, a Democrat from Anchorage.
State regulators blame big spikes in emissions to "upsets" at a few facilities like this one in Houston in 2012
With budgets already reduced and with more cuts on the way, federal environmental regulators are expected to be doing fewer inspections of industries that pollute. And if state environmental regulators were expected to take up the slack, many of them — including those in Texas —- are dealing with budget cuts of their own.
“There have been just dramatically fewer [EPA] inspections,” said Bernadette Rappold, a lawyer who spent years working in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement division. She’s now with the McGuireWoods law firm in Washington.
In the next few years, Rappold said even fewer inspections and enforcement actions are expected if the EPA’s budget-slashing five year plan is adopted.
“It’s not the case that it’s simply the federal EPA that’s been cut and the states can pick up the slack. The states are, in many instances, hurting too.”
US Coast Guard Lt. Dave Wood with volunteers on Galveston Island
Volunteers Warned Phones with Photos of Oiled Beaches Could Be Confiscated
When a barge carrying fuel oil collided with a ship last month off Galveston Island, hundreds of people began signing up to help. For days now, volunteers have been walking the beaches looking for oil slicks, tarballs, and injured wildlife. Their reports are helping officials pinpoint where to send clean-up crews.
One of the volunteers is Kelli Stoveken from Seabrook, a community 20 miles up the shoreline of Galveston Bay from where the barge collision happened last month.
“I grew up in this area. I worked summers on a shrimp boat in Clear Lake. I don’t want to see anything happen to it,” Stoveken said.
She was among a dozen volunteers who gathered early last Friday morning at the old Galveston County Courthouse. Under the coordination of the Galveston Bay Foundation and the U.S. Coast Guard, they were checked in, given photo IDs, and lectured on the do’s and don’ts of being a volunteer “sentinel.” Continue Reading →
Drilling for oil & gas can generate thousands of barrels of waste per well
In one of the hottest plays for natural gas drilling, Bob Patterson wonders if what the drilling industry leaves behind will come back to haunt the community.
“It’s just a ticking time bomb before we have major aquifer contamination,” Patterson told StateImpact.
Patterson’s fear is about what are called reserve pits. The earthen pits are dug on the site of a drilling rig. Into the pits go thousands of barrels-worth of drilling waste. The waste comes back up out of the well as the drill cuts thousand of feet down into the earth. The waste can be a muddy, oily mix of saltwater, sand, and drilling fluids and can contain chemicals and diesel fuel.
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