Tyler County Tank Explosion Similar to Kanawha’s Water Pollution

Tyler County also dealing with contamination — Op-Ed Commentary

Op-Ed by Bill Hughes, Charleston Gazette Mail, Sunday, February 9, 2014

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — In early January, as I walked through a hay field in the bottom land along Big Run in Tyler County, I tried to avoid stepping in big blobs of black goo next to a Marcellus Shale gas well pad. It was cold, and the new snow at the edges made the black sludge from a recently exploded tank easily visible.

It was a stark contrast of smelly, slimy black and clean snowy white. Liquid contents of the tank had already percolated into the soil. A conductivity test in the standing puddles gave off-the chart readings. Probably a lot is still there in the soil. A mixed brew of strong hydrocarbon vapors was in the air, and they filled the valley for the next two days. At least until the rain.

Little did I know that I was experiencing a small foretaste of similar conditions on the Elk River, soon to bring embarrassing national attention to Charleston, Kanawha County and all of West Virginia.

However, right in front of me that Friday afternoon of Januay 3rd, I knew there was also a serious risk to the surface water a few feet away. I stood a few feet from the well pad, splattered with gunk, and also a few feet from the flowing stream of Big Run. This flows into Indian Creek, which shortly flows into the long Middle Island Creek only a few miles upstream from the city water intake for the town of Middlebourne, the county seat of Tyler.

It was about 16 hours after the explosion as we took a lot of photographs to document the damage to the well pad and extent of the material dispersed over the pad and hayfield. The explosion happened late on Thursday, January 2nd.

There had been six big steel tanks on the gas well pad, each capable of holding about 8,000 gallons. They were interconnected and sat in a row on an unlined area. Dirt was piled up around the edges to retard any leaks. Hydraulic fracturing was in progress. The well pad explosion blew the bottom off the last tank, then threw it over a few tractor trailer frack pumps and into the hillside.

It was less than a week before the strong smell along the Elk River would raise concerns in Kanawha County.

Here in Tyler County, I thought Middlebourne’s water supply would be safe. I was wrong. I knew it was forecast to get very cold and unlikely to rain. I was wrong. I assumed that a full environmental cleanup crew would soon be on site. Wrong again. I was hopeful, given the magnitude of the risk and the nearness of the stream, and the highly visible location, that there would be a complete, swift and well coordinated clean up response. I was totally wrong. It took four days for some state agency to tell someone to do something.

As the weather changed, the huge cold front moving in early Jan. 6 dumped more than half an inch of rain in Tyler County. I received a panicked phone call from the nearby landowner. Water was flowing down through the hayfield. The creek was up. The contamination was washing into the stream on its way to Middlebourne. Cleanup did not start for four days, and for four days no one told the town Middlebourne about the explosion and pollution coming their way.

I know it is hard to believe, but the state’s industry friendly gas well permitting guidelines allowed the well pad to be located in a floodplain and very close to the stream. You would think we would know better by now. We looked the other way. We always do.

This well pad in a floodplain is not the only one. Six tanks on an unlined well pad, near a creek bank in a floodplain? Did we go to sleep?  What’s wrong here? And what was in the tanks? We don’t know. How much was in the tanks? We don’t know. Why was there no impermeable liner under the tanks? We don’t know.  Had this arrangement been inspected? We don’t know. How much contamination washed into the Middle Island watershed? We just don’t know.

However, we do know the tank contents must have been volatile. It did explode with enough force to blow the bottom off the tank, and then rocket launch an 8,000-gallon steel tank over a few big trucks. Given the nasty fumes from the residue it was presumably toxic and should have been contained immediately and kept out of the surface water. No labels on the tanks. No vent pipes on the tanks until after the explosion. No valves on the tanks to isolate them. Inadequate, infrequent, toothless inspections.

Residents of Charleston, does this sound familiar?

I have followed the news coverage and felt sorry for the large number of seriously inconvenienced residents. How much leaked into the Elk River? Don’t know. When did it start? Don’t know. How dangerous is it? Don’t know. Why were all the antique tanks not inspected? Don’t know. Why no secondary containment? Don’t know. Why was it located upstream from the water supply intake? Don’t know. And why, if some industry group says a chemical is not categorized as hazardous, do we think it is therefore benign?

Here in the frenzied Wild West fields of Marcellus shale gas operations, we really cannot worry too long about you folks in Kanawha County. Sure, we sort of feel bad for all of you, but, you know, we have our own assortment of community hazards, and they do not make the national news. They don’t make the Charleston news.

We have many hundreds of Marcellus shale gas tanker trucks marked “residual waste” or “brine.” What exactly is in all of them, we don’t know. Not hazardous, they say.

And, speaking of non-hazardous, last year our state-supported natural gas industry generously provided to our local landfill more than 250,000 tons of uncharacterized horizontal drill waste material. That is a lot. It is ours to keep. Forever.

And if you read the fine print on the non-existing label, it also comes with some miscellaneous heavy metals and radioactive constituents. The effluent from the landfill goes to the river. Our river is handy for disposing of waste isn’t it?

And across many counties, we have more than our share of pipeline ruptures spilling contaminants into our surface waters. On a regular basis, we have our explosions, fires, fatalities, injuries, spills, flares and air pollution.

Why do we as a state keep doing the same dumb things over and over? Why do we always favor, support and encourage commercial, big industry interests over safe water and environmental protection? Why do we not always consider the long-term best interests of all our grandchildren? Why have we, the voting, taxpaying citizens for decades, allowed our politicians to routinely gut environmental regulations and strip authority and resources from our regulatory agencies to defang them into innocuous enablers?

In recent years, residents in the very active Marcellus gas well fields have come to the same conclusion that residents in the southern coalfields did decades ago. There is some Jekyll and Hyde quality at the DEP. The DEP has many state employees truly committed to protecting the environment. They are knowledgeable, responsive and dedicated, and true public servants, working against restraints and with limited resources and minimal political support. So some times when I, or my neighbors call, we get lucky, and we are fortunate and very grateful when we actually get someone from the Department of Environmental Protection. But at other times, when a concerned citizen has a serious and urgent or chronic and routine problem related to the coal, oil, or especially a Marcellus gas well operation, they call the same number and get someone from the Division of Energy Promoters.

It seems that as a state, we continue to choose ingrained, intentional, culturally reinforced ignorance. We are collectively and politically choosing to stay ignorant. We do not seem to have learned from our mistakes. We forget our history. Really now folks, leaky storage tanks upstream of the city water intake. Think again. We can do better. But, on new well pads we still put gas well condensate and flowback storage tanks, in the floodplain, on a stream bank with no liner under them. We should know better.

Let us try to start over again. We must compel our elected political leaders to keep our collective grandchildren foremost in our minds. Because if we don’t, the chemical and energy companies surely will not. It is not their priority. Their job is to mine coal, and get more gas and make more money. West Virginia Wild and Wonderful or industrialized and polluted — it’s our choice.

Good luck to Kanawha and Tyler counties. We all share many risks.

>>> Bill Hughes is chairman of the Wetzel County Solid Waste Authority.