Remember that the cement casing melts on contact with many of the highly poisonous chemicals that drilling companies inject through the casing and what doesn't melt could easily get cracked and broken in unstable formations.  This has been the case with other injection wells in Wise County.

As Peggy reported:

The new injection well permits come even as the railroad commission shut down an injection well near Boyd in Wise County on Jan. 22. Operated by Hydro-FX, Inc., a subsidiary of Star of Texas Energy Services, about 4 miles west of Boyd, the injection well began to affect production in nearby gas wells prior to its closure.

Once the Hydro-FX well was closed, pressure at the nearby gas wells decreased, according to Nye.

People living on nearby ranches are beginning to have problems with their water wells, too, according to Jim Joling, who lives near the Hydro-FX well.

"I've gotten calls from two people near the wells who say their water is bad," Joling said.

Joling headed up a neighborhood group that fought the initial permitting of the Hydro-FX well in 2003. He said residents had some idea what might happen, knowing a little about the area's geology and the failure of a similar injection well in Chico at the time.

"That well broke out and the waste came to the surface," Joling said. "So you know it passed through freshwater tables to get there."

The neighbors pooled their money to commission an independent hydrologist to study the Hydro-FX plans. That study predicted the failure that has now occurred, Joling said.

He and neighboring ranchers have long been disappointed in the responses of the railroad commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to the neighborhood concerns, Joling said.

The Railroad Commission is investigating the Boyd injection well failure but that investigation could drag on for years as the residents of Panola County can verify.  In the meanwhile, no one knows if their water is safe for drinking, watering animals, or bathing babies.

According to a mineral lease lawyer at the Barnett Shale Symposium in Fort Worth last Friday, people who lease their mineral rights for drilling should include a provision in the lease that the drilling company will bear responsibility for any damage to their water well.  He said that, after the fact, it is almost impossible to prove that the well was damaged by drilling.  One of his client's water well was so polluted from the drilling on their property that it burned their skin when they bathed.  Unfortunately, they learned the hard way because they did not have the water well damage clause so they could not hold the drilling company responsible.  This parallels the experience of Panola County residents.

Just ask our own Tracy Smith about her fight to prevent the injection well that is permitted just a stone's throw away from her home.

Wise County resident Tracy Smith, whose fight against a Pioneer Exploration permit for an injection well near her home is now with the Texas Supreme Court, said state law is not on the side of individual residents.

Please stop now and call, write, or fax the members of Texas Natural Resources Committee and ask them to support SB-714 and SB-715.

She points to two bills currently in the Texas Senate's Natural Resources Committee, Senate Bills 714 and 715. Both would remove some of the exemptions currently granted to oil and gas companies from groundwater conservation districts. Many officials believe that counties in the Barnett Shale will be required to form such districts in the near future, since rural residents and small cities still rely on wells for drinking water.

Written by Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Arlington, SB 714 would require drillers to report groundwater use for drilling and fracing. This process of forcing sand and water into wells in order to release the gas can use up to 5 million gallons per frac, and as many as 17 fracs for certain kinds of wells. SB 715, also written by Fraser, would require better public notification of proposed injection wells so that the public can participate in the permitting process.

I especially like that last paragraph because it confirms the numbers in my op-ed piece..  Those numbers were disputed by the Wise County chair, Brenda Rankin, in the following comment she posted in My response to Big Oil's BIG GUNS:

TXsharon is helping her neighbors by telling them oil and gas industry is using all the water; however, her figures of using 2,250,000 million gallons of water per frac and her figures of an average of 17 fracs per well have been refuted by the Texas Oil and Gas Association and the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association. Who is misleading the residents of Wise County?

Egg meet face

Like many people, Brenda seems to believe the numbers that are VOLUNTARILY reported by oil and gas.  Since oil and gas is exempt, they are not required to keep track of their water usage and no one monitors how much they use or what they pump back into the ground.  They could say ANYTHING and there is NO WAY to verify their numbers.

However, sometimes you can catch them off guard and encourage them to brag as they did Friday when I attended the Barnett Shale Symposium and Jay Ewing of Devon reported that the 2.5 million gallons of fresh water used per frac is for parrallel wells which are rare.  These day horozontal wells are the norm and those use a lot more water.  But, that's a diary for another day.

Learn from our mistakes.

Smith said she's not sure the bills will make it out of committee, but she's hopeful, as she gets more and more calls from residents in other Barnett Shale counties. She said she's talked to people in Hill, Hunt, Parker, Tarrant and Denton counties who want to understand what's happening to groundwater in Wise County.

"It started in Wise County," Smith said. "People need to see the mistakes made in Wise County and pay attention."

Is your county on this list?

The parenthetical number indicates the number of newly permitted wells.

Archer - 3
Clay - 1
Cooke - 7
Denton - 2 (1)
Erath - 1
Grayson - 1
Hamilton - 1 (1)
Hardeman - 7
Hill - 1 (1)
Hood - 8 (4)
Jack - 15
Johnson - 17 (7)
Knox - 2 (1)
Montague - 20 (1)
Parker - 6 (5)
Somervell - 5 (3)
Tarrant - 1 (1)
Wichita - 4
Wilbarger - 2
Wise - 26 (3)
Young - 7
SOURCE: Railroad Commission of Texas, as of March 5.