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Colorado Officials Question Whose Water is Being Pumped By Gas Wells

Posted on: Thursday, 29 September 2005, 18:01 CDT

By Charles Ashby, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

Sep. 29--DENVER -- The state needs to get a handle on just whose water natural gas drillers are pumping out of the ground, two Southern Colorado officials told lawmakers Wednesday.

Las Animas Commissioner Ken Torres and the county's legal water expert, Trinidad attorney Jerry McDaniels, told the Legislature's Water Resources Review Commission that oil and gas companies are pumping millions of gallons of usable water out of thousands of wells statewide.

But while most of that water is going toward some beneficial use, or is being pumped back into the ground, the drillers may be harming downstream users without knowing it, the two men said.

"How are we messing up the groundwater so that some farmer downstream is being shorted his water two years from now?" McDaniels said. "That's why the question of tributary, non-tributary (water) really should be a fundamental question that is resolved in any basin that is opened up for that kind of production."

Tributary water refers to water that is already part of a river basin, most if not all of which is already allocated for some use. Non-tributary water generally comes from deep wells that don't mix with tributary water flows. Most of that type of water is not already legally earmarked for any beneficial use.

Drilling companies extracting natural gas from coal-bed methane wells, such as those found in Las Animas County, routinely pump water out of newly drilled wells before reaching any gas.

At times, that water is pumped back into the ground. But in the wells west of the Raton Basin in Southern Colorado, most of it is sent down the Purgatoire River toward Kansas, McDaniels and Torres said.

Currently, there are 2,352 active oil and gas wells in Southern Colorado, most of which are drilled into coal-bed methane deposits that produce about 62.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a year.

At the same time, those wells also produce about 3.3 billion gallons of water a year, most of which comes from wells in Las Animas, Huerfano, Kiowa and Baca counties. Gas wells are also operating in Prowers and Bent counties, but they don't produce much water. There are no wells in Pueblo County.

"Out of all the CBM (coal-bed methane) wells (in the state) the only real area for discharge of decent, quality water is in the Raton Basin," McDaniels said. "In Huerfano County, there's wells down there producing really good water and and very little gas. They're gushing with water. One's got to ask, 'Is this tributary water?' and if so, what downstream user is not getting his water this year?"

In an effort to try to ensure that water in the Raton Basin is being put to beneficial use, Las Animas County filed a decree in water court in the hopes of answering some of those questions in general, and who, specifically, owns millions of gallons of water from wells just west of Trinidad.

Torres said the question is of particular importance to his county's farmers and ranchers, who he said were forced to sell up to 65 percent of their cattle during the recent drought because of a lack of water.

"I've had a lot of these farmers and ranchers come up to me and ask,' How can we use some of this (gas well) produced water?'" Torres said. "We filed on that produced water because there was no direct answer from the (Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission) and Division of Water Resources on who owned that water. We want to put some beneficial use to that water."

Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus and chairman of the water committee, said he, too, was interested in learning an answer to the questions Torres and McDaniels asked, but neither he nor the rest of the committee indicated it was an issue they would address when the Legislature reconvenes next year.

In 2003, then Rep. Brad Young, R-Lamar, introduced a bill that would have allowed the state engineer to issue permits to appropriate water from natural gas wells for beneficial uses, but the measure was killed, in part, because of concerns over who owns the water.

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

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Source: The Pueblo Chieftain

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