Hearing on oil waste water well draws a crowd in Panhandle

March 25, 2015, 6:44 a.m. ·

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A plan to take waste water from Colorado and Wyoming oil wells and dispose of it in Nebraska drew a crowd at a public hearing in the Panhandle on Tuesday. Residents near the proposed well are worried about what happens if the well leaks.


Terex, a Colorado-based company, wants to take an old oil well near Mitchell, Nebraska in the northern panhandle and use it to store waste water from oil wells in Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado.

An overflow crowd showed up for a public hearing on the project at the state Oil and Gas Commission office in small-town Sidney, Nebraska. The commission delayed any decision on the well. It has 30 days to make its ruling.

Most who testified over three hours opposed the well.

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Only 25 testifiers were allowed in the office at a time. Those in line to testify had to wait until another person finished before they could enter the commission office. (Photo by Grant Gerlock, NET News)

“I mean, (with) today’s technology there is no way to clean up an aquifer and that’s all there is to it,” said Scott Melvin of Bridgeport, Neb. “And like everybody else here, that aquifer not only supplies my drinking water but my livestock’s drinking water as well.”

Oil waste water is a salty, chemical brine that can’t just be dumped into waterways so it’s injected underground. Trucks could soon start rolling through the town of Mitchell hauling up to 10,000 barrels of the water each day.

Judy Broeder, who lives four miles from the proposed well, said she doesn’t want Sioux County to become the oil industry’s dumping ground.

“You know there’s few people, who cares,” Broeder said. “Well, we care. If we don’t have water, my 94-year-old dad said, ‘Yeah, it’ll just be rattlesnakes and rabbits.'"

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(Graphic by Lisa Craig, NET)


(Graphic by Lisa Craig, NET)

That is little comfort to Patty Goodschmidt, who lives seven miles from the well. Goodschmidt said accidents still happen.

“There also has been two fires in the last two months at wastewater disposal wells,” Goodschmidt said. “One has been in Oklahoma, the other has been in North Dakota. One was caused by lightning. The other was caused by human error. So we can’t fight Mother Nature and we can’t fight human error.”

Terex says the pressure of the well will be monitored to prevent leaks and the water around it sampled to detect any contamination. But the well in Sioux County would be the largest disposal well in the state. In the company’s testimony before the commission, Marty Gottlob of Terex said this well can accommodate large volumes of saltwater.

“It has these disposal zones that just jumped out and said ‘Inject into us because we’re far from the aquifers and we have a lot of capability to accept the oil and we can do it at relatively low pressures and we take a lot of it,’” Gottlob said

And the oil industry is running low on that kind of disposal space.

“Right now things are slow, but a year ago for example there were waiting lines of up to eight hours to dispose of water,” Gottlob said.

Allen Heim of Terex says there could be more oil production in Sioux County, but if you want oil you’re going have to live with waste water. An injection well, he says, is still the safest way to get rid of it. If there’s no disposal well nearby, companies will explore elsewhere.

“We need a well in Sioux County if we’re going to pursue oil in Sioux County,” Heim said. “There’s a company up there drilling now and there’s several companies that have leased their land and they’re looking for opportunities. And they’re all watching to see what’s going happen with this."

But most opponents aren’t worried about drilling for more oil in Sioux County. They think of Nebraska as a water state, not an oil state. And even if the Oil and Gas Commission approves the Terex disposal well, they say they’ll consider court action to block the project.