There's a battle raging about soil analysis and how it might be applied in setting pollution limits for water discharges from oil and gas operations in the state.

It's the subject of a state Environmental Quality Council hearing on Thursday at the University of Wyoming.

The "agricultural use protection" rule-making attempts to establish a clear policy about how the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality determines pollution limits in permits for water discharges - a mainstay of the coal-bed methane industry.

In order to produce methane gas from coal, the industry pumps nearly 2 million barrels of water per day from coal aquifers and dumps it on the surface. The concern is whether all of the coal-bed methane water discharges will load soils with too much sodium and inhibit crop and herd production.

John Wagner, administrator of DEQ's Water Quality Division, said the agency's methodology for setting sodium adsorption ratio and electrical conductivity standards has evolved over the past 10 years. The result has been that permits are often appealed by industry for being too stringent, or appealed by agriculture for being too lenient.

Sometimes a permit is appealed by both parties.

"Our standard says you cannot do anything that would significantly cause a decrease in (agricultural) production. It's deceptively simple," Wagner said.

In clarifying a policy, industry and state regulatory officials have advocated a formula derived from the U.S. Salinity Laboratory, which if made policy would actually loosen sodic and salinity limits that have been imposed on the coal-bed methane industry for years.

Wagner explained that there's little or no background water quality data available in proposed discharge areas from which to calculate appropriate limits for sodium adsorption and electrical conductivity. The U.S. Salinity Laboratory formula looks to evidence in the soil for background water quality.

"There's disagreement among the experts about whether or not that's appropriate," Wagner said.

Farmers, ranchers and several UW scientists contend that the formula is based on closely managed irrigation systems. Trying to apply the formula to industrial water discharges across an entire landscape simply isn't good science, they say.

"You can find samples of soil with high salinity, and it doesn't mean you can justify putting high amounts of sodium and sodic water on it," said Ginger Paige, UW assistant professor of water resources.

Paige said that not only is the formula intended for managed irrigation systems, but it's intended to strike a balance between water and soil for productivity - not to calculate maximum sodium adsorption and electrical conductivity limits.

Kevin Harvey, of KC Harvey LLC, is industry's primary soil consultant in the case. In his written testimony to the Environmental Quality Council, Harvey suggested that detecting "measurable" change in plant production is difficult to do, and difficult to attribute to the coal-bed methane industry. Other factors - drought, for instance - are more significant.

The Powder River Basin Resource Council, a landowners' advocacy group, has argued that DEQ's science is also wrong on leaching estimates. The PRBRC also alleges that DEQ even based calculations for sodium adsorption and electrical conductivity on a formula that was discovered to be incorrect.

"The state DEQ director has relied upon the industry-paid scientists for the wrong equation, for the wrong leaching factor and for the wrong application of this science," said Jill Morrison, PRBRC organizer.

Energy reporter Dustin Bleizeffer can be reached at (307) 577-6069 or dustin.bleizeffer@trib.com.