From December 29, 2022
In his Nov. 24 column, Mr. Yates argues that at the July 15 Valencia County Commission hearing, the state demonstrated how it “imposes and enforces strict rules to protect fresh water aquifers.”
I was at that meeting. How many rules did the state present to monitor groundwater during or after drilling an oil well? None.
The state showed no state requirements to monitor groundwater. The state only (arbitrarily) imposes a certain length of steel casing to isolate the oil well from shallow groundwater.
Oil wells are drilled deep, and the shallow parts of the well are completed very fast, with minimal concern for the shallow layers, as the drillers are anxious to reach the deep, potentially oil-bearing strata.
There is no evaluation of groundwater aquifers, aquitards or distinct groundwater salinity zones during that early process.
Drilling proceeds blindly through. Since there is no groundwater monitoring required, there will be no way to know if the drilling (whether successful or not!) has impacted the groundwater until a nearby groundwater well shows some contamination (from oil or simply from mixed-up groundwater salinity zones), and this could be many years later. By then, it is too late to fix, and the drillers are long gone.
The county cannot hide behind non-existing state rules to monitor groundwater during oil drilling.
Original source can be found here.
