State begins compiling comments

Public voices CBM, water rights concerns

By RINDI WHITE-Frontiersman reporter

WILLOW -- The final public workshop on shallow-gas drilling wrapped up in Willow Saturday, bringing to a close a process through which around 100 people attended weekly sessions throughout February to recommend changes to state regulations relating to drilling.

Water management was the focus of the final workshop, and state and local officials agreed the subject matter warranted a longer time for consideration than the three to four hours generally allowed at an evening meeting. Department of Natural Resources officials, along with representatives from the Department of Environmental Conservation's Division of Water and the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and representatives from the Mat-Su Borough, trekked to the Willow Community Center Saturday to take part in the six-hour workshop. Willow has become a focus in the coal-bed methane development controversy recently, with much of the area covered by shallow-gas development leases. Although many of those who attended the workshop had taken part in previous workshops, more than one-third of those present were from the Willow area, and sought more information about the potential consequences of drilling in the area, in addition to specific questions about water management issues.

Much of the concern centered around property owners' rights, should their land or water be damaged by drilling. State officials reiterated the importance of obtaining water rights on property.

"If you have water rights, you have the legal standing to assert those rights, both to the state and against the party you feel caused it," Sharmon Stambaugh with DEC said. Oran Woolley added that property owners can assert water rights if their water quality is compromised; not just if a well dries up.

"If water quality violations affect your well, your responsibility is to let us know," Woolley said. "We take the burden and figure out where [the contamination] came from, what happened, and go from there."

Some at the meeting were skeptical of how involved the state was willing to get if a well is contaminated or compromised, and challenged the idea that the state would lead the charge taking legal action on behalf of property owners with damaged water sources.

"The actual reality of it is, yes, it's your water right, and it's your responsibility to assert it," DNR representative Gary Prokosch said.

Others at the meeting were concerned about the potential use of contaminants during the fracturing process. When shallow-gas wells are drilled, a fracturing compound is generally placed down the well to stimulate methane flow. Stambaugh said she's heartened by a trend in the industry toward using more synthetic fracturing fluids, instead of harsher compounds containing diesel or hydrochloric acid, and plans to request drilling companies to keep material safety data sheets posted. Although companies currently have a window of time -- some estimate two years -- before they have to make available to the public the contents of their fracturing compounds, Stambaugh said that may be an area where regulations should change.

"We can require that [drilling companies] report that in all their plan reviews," Stambaugh said. "I'm hearing the message loud and clear from all of you today."

With the final workshop complete, Pat Galvin, with DNR, said his agency will begin the process of reviewing suggestions gleaned through the process and compiling them into a draft report -- expected to be available sometime in March.

Some of the primary issues Galvin said he has heard come up again and again at the meetings are the importance of a surface user agreement and an adequate bond to address potential impacts of drilling.

Other agencies will be a part of that process to some extent, Galvin said, just as they have been a part of the workshops that have taken place.

Stambaugh said DEC has two areas of oversight for drilling -- they review plans for drilling any time water is moved from one location to another, and can set recommendations to be included in a plan of operations -- the individual plan each company must have approved in order to operate in an area.

Murph O'Brien, the chief of planning for the Mat-Su Borough, said borough staff will review the comments made at the DNR meetings, and discuss what issues could be addressed through borough ordinance.

Bob Crandall, with AOGCC, said the commission will be looking through the comments as well, and considering the recommendations where appropriate.

"We'll look at the particular recommendations that deal with us -- how we deal with other agencies and that sort of thing," Crandall said. "We'll be part of the process. We're in this process, so we're going to follow it through."

For more information about the recommendations given at the public workshops, or to find out more about the next steps in the process, visit DNR's Division of Oil and Gas Web site, www.dog.dnr.state.ak.us/oil/ and follow the link entitled "Mat-Su Valley Coal Bed Methane Project." Comments are also available through that Web site, and comments or suggestions on the process are still being accepted.

Contact Rindi White at rindi.white@frontiersman.com.