Sootypaws News – Page 16 – News from off the grid

The Solar Shed

Off the Grid
April 20, 2014

We’ve been working on our solar shed. This has meant expanding the garden area to bring in more light by cutting more trees. A side benefit is the new raised bed we’ve made outside the fenced garden area. We’re trying to grow potatoes in the new bed this year.

The shed is small. The roof will provide support for the solar panel(s). Molly will have space to store her tools close to the garden. And there will be space in the shed for the solar stuff — charge controller, batteries, inverter, etc.

This shows the framework for the shed. It stands to the north of the garden (that’s the garden gate to the left behind the shed).

In this photo we’ve finished putting up the siding and there are shingles on the roof of the shed. Molly wants to paint the shed bright yellow ochre with crimson trim. You can see the shed will have two windows (one to the south and one to the west). The white and blue barrels hold water for the garden during the summer.

The shed stands to the left and the fenced garden is behind Molly to the east. A large pine fell and has been cut up but not hauled away yet. We have a lot of dead pines to remove from the expanded garden area. We used pine logs for the sides of the potato bed.

Molly cut two deep furrows in the soil of the garden bed and is using wood chips as markers for where to plant the seed potatoes.

Here Molly is placing a seed potato in the furrow.

Molly immediately covered the seed potato with mulch, filling the furrow. The mulch is composted leaves raked in the yard in 2012. Even though it’s been hot and dry (into the 70s and mid-80s), the mulch has kept moisture in the furrow. The nice thing about mulch is if things start to get dry we just add more and we have lots!

We’ll keep you posted on how the garden shed project is going and the potatoes.

Gas Well Study, 2013

Gas Well Study
March 24, 2014

The 2013 Gas Well Study is now available. Last year we one of our focuses was Underground Injection Control (UIC) class 2 wells used to dispose of oil and gas waste. We have a section on our website devoted to UIC class 2 documents for 5 wells in West Virginia.

This is a photo of UIC class 2 well in Kanawha county by Tupper’s Creek (47-039-02210). The tall tank in the photo is able to hold 57,000 gallons of waste. This well has been used since the 1980s to dispose of natural gas and pipeline waste. When we visited in April 2013 there was a strong objectionable odor. The permit requires vapor recovery units for the tanks (there is the large tank and two smaller tanks). There is nothing in the well’s file at the Office of Oil and Gas to show that the tanks actually have vapor recovery units.

This UIC class 2 well is in the Amherst Plymouth Wildlife Management Area (47-079-01452). It has all the physical features we want to see at a UIC class 2 well site but are not at all common in West Virginia — cement lined unloading area with curbs/berms to contain spills; the six large tanks sit within cement lined secondary containment; a pressure gauge on the wellhead and another pressure gauge for the annulus; and good site security including a fence and a locked gate. Besides the physical features we want to see an agency (in West Virginia it’s the Office of Oil and Gas) that enforces compliance, again something that isn’t happening in West Virginia.

We looked at other wells, including this vertical shale gas well in the Amherst Plymouth Wildlife Management Area (47-079-01324). This Google Earth view gives a good impression of the site — poorly vegetated with severe erosion of the fill slope. Like other wells in the WMA this site’s condensate storage tank doesn’t have secondary containment as required by law.

There are photos of well sites and other information about last year’s project available on our website. We’ll be writing more about UIC wells and other topics. One of this year’s project is a set of proposed workshops. We’ll keep you posted.

Spring Fire Season

General | Woods
March 18, 2014

Fall fire season is always the worst, but spring can be pretty awful when it is dry and warm. Like last Friday. We got back from chores in town and a fire truck passed after we parked at my mom’s. And then other trucks. The woods were on fire.

The fire was on the ridge west of us. It had been windy all day, hot and dry. A truck parking on tall grass managed to set it on fire and that was the start.

To fight the fire they brought in fire trucks from Poca, Sissonville and Bancroft. A gas well was in the center of the fire area. If the well had been venting to the tank at the time there might have been an explosion.

By the time I got to the fire they’d already contained the fire and had begun the long process of mopping up. There were still hot spots burning and areas near the firebreak that needed to be checked.

The firebreak is in the center of the photo. They used leaf blowers to clear a wide swath of leaves. A hot spot is in the background. There was a stump burning and just past that a dead pine.

The fire is being put out using water but since the tree if it fell would cross the firebreak, they cut it down.

The area burned was 12-15 acres. On Saturday a crew returned to the site and burned leaves within the contained area so that there would be nothing to catch fire again.

That was too close for comfort. The way the wind was blowing and the closeness of the fire had everyone on the ridge worried.