Industry is out of control

According to Bruce Hinchey, president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, as quoted in the May 6 Casper Star-Tribune, the oil industry has a good environmental track record in Wyoming. Not in my part of Wyoming.

During my early morning walk last week, a fleet of fracking trucks and service vehicles rolled into our subdivision and proceeded to the Crosby site gas well in our neighborhood here in Clark. The dust was so bad we couldn’t see our neighbor’s house, and I needed a prescription atomizer to breathe. We were concerned about the horrible road dust and wondered why stipulations for dust control hadn’t been put on the permit to frack. We were shocked to learn that there had been no permit issued by the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Information requests were also made to Department of Environmental Quality and the governor’s office. No one was aware that the Crosby well(s) were being hydraulically fractured.

The Crosby site is under investigation by the DEQ for the Crosby 25-3 gas well blowout in 2006. The blowout resulted in contamination of the shallow and deep aquifers of the Line Creek drainage. Four years later, remediation hasn’t taken place and monitoring of the contamination has cost the insurance company between $2 million and $4 million and thousands of hours of work by state agencies and the concerned public.

There has not been a total cost determined for remediation and monitoring of the aquifers, Line Creek, or the 25 private drinking water wells in the project area. It has been estimated that remediation costs (if remediation is possible) could be anywhere from to $4 million to $20 million over at least the next 10 years. Can the insurance company pay this amount, or will it be the state and the citizens?

Windsor, the drilling company that had the blowout and caused the contamination, has had three notices of violations, caused disastrous contamination in both aquifers of the Line Creek drainage, contaminated drinking water wells, failed to submit start-up notifications and annual testing for their air quality permits, illegally dumped produced water and drilling fluids on private property, and has had numerous other complaints from neighbors.

To us living in the middle of the gas fields, this industry seems under-regulated and out of control.

DICK BILODEAU, Clark