Questions about CBM drilling go beyond the reaches of politics

Spectrum, by T. L. Whitstine Sr.

Rep. Vic Kohring seems to have a phobia about gays, environmentalist, no-growth liberals, Progressives and anyone else who would dare question something he may have done. I am not sure what a Progressive is but if they are someone who is in between the far left Democrats and the right wing Republicans and doesn't care for either one's politics then that's my kind of party.

The meeting at Lazy Mountain that I went to didn't have a bunch of people shouting "No development," but it did have a lot of people saying "Wait, I have questions about what safeguards I have about my water, my property, where can they drill, where is this millions of barrels of water that will be produced going to go?" The only answer we got from Sen. Scott Ogan was that they are not supposed to put it in containment pits or let it go in the river, but there is no law saying it has to be reinjected back into the formation. Maybe plan D is getting a waiver from the state to do something they aren't supposed to do. Hey it's done all the time, no big deal. Sen. Ogan also said he would eat or drink anything Evergreen pumped into the ground for cracking the coal seams. I wonder if he is still making that claim after Evergreen's statement this week.

As far as House Bill 69 goes, I would advise everybody in the Valley to get a copy of HB 69 and read it very carefully and you will find that it says that no one in the Valley or state can stop Evergreen from doing whatever they want to do if it pertains to the drilling and or producing of a coal-bed methane well. This bill was written for Evergreen, by Evergreen and to line Evergreen's pocket, no other reason. If Evergreen is such a good neighbor perhaps they will publish some names where they are currently doing business Outside and let us see for ourselves, and don't just show us people who own lots of land and are getting $70-80 thousand in royalities, show us some people who only own a few acres and are not getting any royalty money. This would be more like what is happening here. Where are the benefits for the Mat-Su residents? Is their gas price going to go down? I don't think so. Rep. Kohring says that Cook Inlet gas will be gone in 10 years, not so; Prudhoe Bay was supposed to be gone 10 years ago, now nobody will give you a shutdown date. In 10 years another form of energy may be available that is much cheeper and easier to get.

As we all know fluids migrate up and down, back and forth, so questions I would like to have answered are: When you pump these multi-millions of barrels of water out of the coal seams where is the replacement water going to come from? Is it coming from my shallow drinking water well? Is it coming from my neighbor's irrigation well which might then leach out my drinking well? Will it come from below the coal beds bringing salt water or some other type of non-potable water? Or could it come from some formation we don't even know about holding who knows what kind of fluid?

My understanding is that the produced water cannot be reinjected back into the CMB formation. The wells that will produce this gas/water will go through my water sands, with the production of thousands of gallons a day per well. It will have to be reinjected at tens of thousands of gallons a day per injection well, also through my water sands. How will the produced water/gas get to the separation units and the water from the separation units to the injection wells? If through pipelines, how will these lines be laid? Will they be above ground or below ground? If below ground, how deep? If above ground, how high, or will it just lay on the ground? Will there be right of ways for inspection? What type of inspections will these lines get -- daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or out of sight, out of mind? If not through lines, what kind of trucks, how big, how many trips a day from each producing well or separator? What type of roads, and will anybody else get to use these roads? Who will pay for maintenance of these roads? Where will each producing well store its water while waiting on a water truck what will be their storage capacity? What surface pressures are the injection wells going to have? What kind of corrosion is going to happen to these wells? At what time will the injection wells get holes in them around my water sands and how many thousands of gallons of contaminated fluid will be put in my water sand before somebody happens to notice? How will the gas get from the separation unit to the middle man? What will happen to any other produced products that cannot be reinjected or sold? If my land buts up to borough or state land can Evergreen drill next to my land destroying trees and tundra on that land, lowering my property values?

Rep. Kohring said something about all these high-paying jobs that would become available, maybe he can be a little more specific as to how many and how much they will pay and will they be local hire or imports from the Lower 48. Rep. Kohring, these are not questions from some wild-eyed tree-hugging environmentalist but from a concerned Progressive (I just love that word) country boy who has seen this show before. In fact, sir, you would have asked these questions yourself if you really had concerns for your constituency. Not just taken Evergreen's word that all they showed you was on the up and up.

Sen. Ogan, Rep. Kohring and Mr. Okland have all stated that we don't need to worry about our property rights because the Alaska State Constitution guarantees us our property rights and they are well protected. Well boys, have I got a news flash for you. Several years ago that same Alaska State Constitution guaranteed me and you a right to subsistence hunt and fish. Try it now and see what happens. Sen. Ogan, you if nobody else should know this. Also just because Evergreen's policy right now requires a five-acre buffer don't mean it will next month.

T.L. Whitstine Sr. is a Butte resident.