By Libby Willis
Special to the Star-Telegram
After a 10-year moratorium, the Fort Worth City Council appears poised to approve locating underground wastewater disposal wells inside the city in areas zoned I, J and K.
They could be 1,000 feet from a protected use [note: could] -- such as your home -- but would require council approval if they were closer than 1,000 feet. Also called "saltwater" wells, these are dump sites for the cocktail of water, sand and fluid used in natural gas hydraulic fracturing operations. There is evidence that some of the "frack" fluids in this wastewater are toxic.
The question is "What has changed that would prompt the city to consider allowing the placement of such wells?" Ironically, there appear to be more concerns now about the wastewater produced in the fracking process and the disposal wells than there were even five years ago.
In early August, the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission banned fracking disposal wells in central Arkansas, near the communities of Greenbrier and Guy and for a 1,150-square-mile radius because of earthquakes. A state geologist reported evidence that certain earthquakes occurred when massive amounts of waste were put in disposal wells in the affected area.
Last year, a study of seismic activity near Dallas/Fort Worth Airport by Southern Methodist University and University of Texas at Austin researchers showed that wastewater disposal wells were a "plausible cause" for the series of small earthquakes that occurred in the area between October 2008 and May 2009. A state tectonic map showed a northeast-trending fault intersects the Dallas-Tarrant county line approximately at the place where the DFW quakes occurred. A wastewater disposal well was placed on or near that fault.
When the injections stopped, the quakes stopped.
Earthquakes caused by wells sited over or close to fault lines, potential for leaks and spills of the chemically laced frack water, potential for contamination of well water or ground water, resident radiation in the frack water, corrosion of the pipelines that could be carrying the water from the well site to a disposal well -- the list goes on and on for why it's hard to love the idea of wastewater disposal wells inside any metropolitan area.
Are either disposal wells or the trucking of contaminated water out of the city the only two options available? Not according to cutting-edge industry that is promoting mobile evaporative units to treat the frack water in Pennsylvania. The units are able to return some of that water to be recycled.
We are living in a historic drought when some cities in our area have begun to ban fracking during the summer months as well as banning the use of city water for fracking. Water conservation is an ongoing concern. Can we afford to put millions of gallons of contaminated water underground and just leave it there, lost forever?
The Fort Worth League of Neighborhoods has commented on all the proposed revisions to the city's Gas Drilling Ordinance (http://www.fwlna.org/).
We recommend that the city continue its moratorium on wastewater disposal wells and encourage the use of new technology to deal with the issue. We would like for Fort Worth to be able to say that it supports the production of "cleaner-burning" natural gas in a manner consistent with our obligation to be effective stewards of local natural resources and to have firm oversight of those business activities which may adversely affect the health, safety and economic welfare of our citizens.
Libby Willis is president of the Fort Worth League of Neighborhoods.
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