Discussion on Boysen concerns

About 20 people attended a meeting last week regarding the Moneta Divide Oilfield and Aethon Energy’s proposed expansion.

Members of the Wyoming Outdoor Council, Worland Conservation District, various Hot Springs County water board members and concerned citizens attended the meeting that answered some questions, but opened up a slew of new ones.

In moving through the room asking what those in attendance were most concerned about with the project, the answers were anywhere from the cumulative effect of the alkalinity of the water, to drinking water quality, long term toxicity and the effects it would have on farms, ranches, wildlife and fish.

It is hard to put the 8.27 million gallons of produced water into perspective.

Imagine a swimming pool 267 feet long (just 33 feet shy of the length of a football field), 50 feet wide and 10 feet deep. That would hold a million gallons of water.

Under Aethon’s planned expansion, eight and a quarter of those swimming pools would be sent into Boysen Reservoir every day.

New information at the meeting shows there are actually 12 points where the produced water and 2,161 tons of dissolved solids would be sent from Alkalai and Badwater creeks into Boysen Reservoir, all of which are “grandfathered”, meaning the company does not need to report most of the stuff in the water or solids that are coming from those points.

The grandfathered status is due to the original points not being under the limitations of the Clean Water Act of 1974. The dissolved solids are seven times greater than the original grandfathered limitations.

Aethon will be responsible for policing themselves a majority of the time when it comes to their discharge as the Department of Environmental Quality only physically inspects an operation every five years.

One concern that was raised during the meeting was what would happen in the case of a flood.

As the water and dissolved solids flow down the streams, it accumulates in the creek beds and along the banks. A flooding incident such as we had just a few springs ago when rock slides in Wind River Canyon were so severe, could actually wash those accumulated solids into the reservoir at a much higher concentration.

Perhaps most concerning with the project is the public does not know what, exactly, is going to be dumped.

As a fracking operation, they do not have to disclose what chemicals they’re using as each company holds their “recipe” for fracking close to the vest. It was explained at the meeting as imagine baking a cake. You can gather all the possible ingredients for baking the cake, but everyone has their own recipe, and they aren’t sharing it.

This raises another issue about water treatment facilities.

Aethon would need five times the water treatment facilities they currently have in order to get the water to Class I status to mix with the reservoir. The question is, are they going to do that?

Winter is going to be another issue.

When the lake freezes in the winter, any discharge would hit the water and immediately sink to the bottom rather than mixing and could eventually follow the lake bottom water flow to the dam and over into the Wind River.

The Department of Environmental Quality has extended the comment period to July 5 and two public meetings will be held, one in Riverton at Central Wyoming College on Monday, May 20 starting at 5:30 p.m. and a second in Thermopolis on Tuesday, May 21 at 5:30 p.m. in the school auditorium.