What Happened at Fernow
What Happened at Fernow
When we learned about the landspraying debacle at Fernow Experimental Forest George made a few phone calls in February. Some of what we'll describe is from those calls and from documents released by PEER (on their website or to Ken Ward, Jr., a West Virginia Gazette reporter).
The well was reportedly drilled using only compressed air and water with no additives. Air drilling frequently also uses a sodium chloride based foaming agent (here's a MSDS sheet for one company's product) but that supposedly wasn't the case at the Berry Energy well.
After drilling, the well was fractured and as part of the completion process a tallow plug was used to hold the fracturing fluids in the formation. When Berry drilled through the plug they lost control of the well and fracturing fluid flowback sprayed out of the well and killed surrounding foliage.
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There are one to maybe two dozen trees, mostly smaller ones, immediately adjacent to the well pit on the lower west side, and a few above the well pad, where the foliage is brown, and indeed on the lower west side, there is little to no ground vegetation. At a casual glance it appears that the area was burned, but there's not really any charring to support that. (From documents released by PEER to Ken Ward, Jr.)
A Forest Service document attributes the leaf wilting and vegetation death to the high pH tallow, but we believe the cause was extremely low pH and high chlorides (both from the hydrochloric acid used for fracturing).
Berry treated the pit waste, but used inadequate activated carbon, and landsprayed 100,000 gallons according the DMR. Actually, what happened was they landsprayed about 80,000 gallons on about half an acre until the Forest Service was able to get them to stop. Berry then landsprayed the balance of the waste on another part of the Forest.
In the smaller area that received 80% of the waste, landspraying resulted in immediate wilting and death, including understory trees. We were told the pit fluids killed "even the greenbriar." In the second, later area, red oaks emerging from acorns and other plants showed damage. The landspraying occurred during a typical wet June/July. This was before the long drought-like period of no rain that came later.
We believe a contributing cause of vegetation death was high chlorides, an incredibly large amount of salt (over two tons) dumped on a small area.
Chlorides cause "salt shock." Wilting results because "a high concentration of salts produces high osmotic pressure" (Howat) . Plants can't get either water or nutrients. Each species reacts to high salinity differently, but even a species with salt tolerance, unexpectedly exposed to high levels, will be affected adversely. In addition, sensitivity to salt may be highest during certain phases of lifecycle, such as germination.
Plants that do survive in soils with high levels of chlorides show specific characteristics: "a smaller stature, with darker, more bluish foliage and occasionally brown leaf tips, leaf mottling, leaf curling and/or chlorosis. A high chlorophyll content and thicker cuticle produces the bluish color" (Howat) .
Forest Service tests of pit fluids are at variance with Berry's results shown on the DMR. Forest Service researchers were surprised by the differences in constituent concentrations they encountered when testing pit waste. They had found a low concentration of chlorides (4,880 mg/l on June 19) but tested a much higher concentration than Berry's DMR results during discharge (13,500 to 14,250 mg/l on June 20). The high concentration of chlorides was still within the state's requirements (if permission from an inspector was given), but if the Forest Service's discharge testing was a good indication of the actual overall concentration of chlorides in the fluids, that means more than double the chloride load than Berry's DMR indicated.
Another concern is two Forest Service tests showing the fluids' pH above 10, the state's maximum for landspraying. One test found a pH of 10.51, the other just before discharge found 11.65. A substance is automatically considered hazardous if its pH is 12.5 or higher.
The discharge of an extremely caustic liquid onto the forest could be a contributing cause of plant mortality, just as we believe the extremely low pH fracture flowback was a contributing cause during the earlier incident.
We believe the extremely high pH came from treating the pit fluids with caustic soda (NaOH) instead of lime. Caustic soda has a pH of about 13-14 and performs similarly to lime in the hydroxide treatment required by the state, except that the quantity of salts (and sodium) produced is much higher.
In these chapters we've focused on chlorides, sodium, and to a lesser degree pH. This doesn't mean that dangerous chemicals used during fracturing aren't an issue, they are. But we don't believe that exotic chemicals were the cause of vegetation dieback.
Here's a quote from a monograph by T. T. Kozlowski:
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Salinization transforms fertile and productive land to barren land, and often leads to loss of habitat and reduction of biodiversity. Salinity limits vegetative and reproductive growth of plants by inducing severe physiological dysfunctions and causing widespread direct and indirect harmful effects, even at low salt concentrations. (page 12)
In 2010 we conducted a series of experiments in our woods to study the effects of chloride on vegetation. What we found was that some species of vegetation were not affected by spraying or irrigation of high chloride fluids. Other species had a dramatically negative response. For one species, spraying would not be advised, and irrigation of fluid above 3000 mg/l chloride also would not be advised. For that species a maximum load appears to be around 1100 pounds chloride per acre. In 2011 we found that chloride in a gel fluid like fracture flowback when sprayed had an increased negative effect on a vulunerable species of vegetation.
Our research has shown that the landspraying debacle at Fernow Experimental Forest was both predictable and preventable. If the state's program had consideration for chloride load it would have been obvious to the Office of Oil and Gas that the land application area in the permit for B800 was grossly undersized. It would also have been obvious to the operator who the state, because of its inattention, places at a disadvantage. Because the problem was predictable it was also preventable.
Go to the last chapter, which has Recommendations and the sources we used.
What Happened at Fernow
Landspraying
Fernow Experimental Forest
Discharge Monitoring Report
Chloride Load
SAR
Liming the Pit
A Short History of Fracturing
Fracturing Chemicals
What Happened at Fernow
Recommendations & Sources
Gas Well Study is the examination of natural gas wells in West Virginia.
Underground Injection Control Class 2 Wells
These wells are used either for the disposal of oil and gas liquid waste or for the enhanced recovery of oil or natural gas.
Gas Well Study Site Visits
Annual reports, environmental assessments, and individual well information.
YouTube Videos
Select videos from the Gas Well Study YouTube channel.
What Happened at Fernow
An investigation into what caused the vegetation death in the land application area after landspraying hydraulic fracture flowback waste.
The Spill at Buckeye Creek
An investigation into a spill from a Marcellus well site into Buckeye Creek in Doddridge county.
The Details
Plunger Lift Technology on Gas Wells
Fluids Brought to the Surface during Production
Plugging a Well
How To Read a Lab Report
Information the Completion Report Provides
Casing and Cementing