Several Bills Filed To Address Injection Wells

A handful of bills were filed Wednesday to address the injection wells. Injection wells have become hot topics in recent years as a result of increased oil and gas drilling. A typical injection well injects salt water (brine) and other drilling waste byproducts into the ground.

As a result of a rubber stamp permitting process on the part of the Texas Railroad Commission and an absence of state laws making it anything less than relatively easy to get a permit for an injection well, numerous environmental and other complaints have surfaced in recent years, particularly in the Barnet Shale region.

SB 275 by State Sen. Robert Nichols (R-Jacksonville) would essentially place a moratorium on the permitting of new injection wells or the approval of new injection wells until the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality adopts rules, “governing all aspects of the management and operation of a new commercial underground injection control well, including the regulation of surface facilities associated with the well.”

SB 274, also by Nichols would place more stringent restrictions on where injection wells can be located. First, the bill changes reduces the distance and changes the requirements for injection wells located near faults. Previously, if a well was to be located within two and a half miles from a fault, the burden was on the applicant to show one of two things: that the fault was “not sufficiently transmissive or vertically extensive to allow migration,” of hazardous wastes; or that the fault had not had a displacement within Holocene time (about 12,000 years in the past to the present), or that if there had been a displacement that no faults passed within 200 feet of the portion of the facility where waste will be conducted. Nichols’ bill would take out the more permissive part of the statute requiring that it be shown that the fault wasn’t sufficiently transmissive and requires all applicants show that the well would be compliant with the Holocene time clause.

The bill also creates several prohibitions relating to where an injection well can be located. The bill would prohibit an injection well in an oil field from which commercial production of oil began before 1935 or on the recharge zone of an aquifer designated as a sole source aquifer under the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974.

In addition, injection wells would be prohibited from being located within one-half mile of an established residence, church, school, day care, body of surface water used as a public drinking water supply, or a public park unless the applicant can prove that the well will be operated in a way that safeguards public health and welfare and protect physical property and the environment.

It also requires the Texas Railroad Commission to define rules that will make other areas unsuitable for injection wells including standards related to flood hazards, discharge or recharge to a groundwater aquifer, soil conditions, areas of direct drainage within one mile of a lake used as a public water supply, active geological processes, coastal high hazard areas such as areas subject to storm surge or shoreline erosion, or is the critical habitat of an endangered species. In addition, the Commission would be required to adopt a rule to prohibit the issuance of permits in these unsuitable areas unless the well, its design, and construction and operational features will prevent adverse effects.

In addition, the Commission must adopt a rule that will allow a local government to petition the Commission for a rule restricting or prohibiting new injection wells in areas they require or that has one or more characteristics listed as “unsuitable” mentioned earlier such as critical habitats of an endangered species, flood hazards, etc.

SB 273, another bill by Nichols, would change the requirements for permitting an injection well and require that applicants will use on-site monitoring wells, will conduct soil tests in accordance with rules adopted by the commission, and that permit holders required to submit to onsite monitoring and soil testing will submit regular reports on groundwater and soil quality on a regular schedule that the commission sets or immediately if a change is detected. HB 177 by State Rep. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe) is identical to SB 273.

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