A rural neighborhood just outside Argyle could become a dumping ground for waste from the region’s natural gas wells.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

A Bartonville Water Supply Corp. groundwater well under construction is shown Wednesday in an area less than two miles from a proposed disposal well for natural gas drilling wastewater, southeast of Argyle.

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A Glen Rose company has asked state regulators for a permit to operate a commercial disposal well to handle up to 1 million gallons of wastewater daily from oil and gas production sites. The disposal well would sit on a 7-acre property near the corner of Frenchtown and Jeter roads, southeast of Argyle.

Meanwhile, another company is moving forward with plans to build four natural gas compressors on the same site, transforming the quiet, wooded tract into a centralized compression facility for about 20 gas wells being drilled or planned in the Argyle area.

The two projects could work in tandem but aren’t dependent on each other’s development, said Kelly Swan, a spokesman for Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Production Co., which owns the 7-acre site and is planning the compressor facility.

The applicant for the disposal well, Bosque Disposal Systems LLC, has secured a state drilling permit but still needs approval to inject the waste. The liquid byproduct of oil and gas drilling is mostly salt water, or brine, but can also contain toxic substances.

Area residents and some government officials are concerned, saying the projects could increase truck traffic, pollute the air and jeopardize drinking water supplies that serve thousands of people. They point to dirty air in Dish, a hotbed of gas compression facilities, and problems in other North Texas towns including leaking injection wells and unexplained radioactive water that some blame on gas drilling activity.

The site is part of a flood plain that carries water south to Grapevine Lake, meaning any surface spills could threaten that water supply as well, neighbors say.

“I quickly discovered that this [disposal well] was not something that I wanted in my neighborhood, nor in my community, because of the potential that it has for contaminating the water supply,” said Jayme Sizelove, who lives with her family on land bordering the 7-acre site.

Sizelove said she submitted a petition to the Texas Railroad Commission with the signatures of 85 area residents opposed to the disposal well.

Gulftex Operating Inc., a Dallas-based energy company that operates gas wells in the Argyle area, also filed a protest against the disposal well, state records show. David York, the company’s executive vice president, declined to comment.

Also closely watching the issue are the Argyle and Bartonville water supply

corporations, which rely heavily on groundwater supplies to serve their combined 11,000 customers. Bartonville Water Supply Corp. is formally protesting the disposal well, which would be less than two miles from one of its existing water wells and another water well under construction south of the Saddle Brook subdivision, general manager Jim Leggieri said.

“Our main concern is just the potential for pollution to the groundwater here in our area,” Leggieri said. “I would be concerned in all areas. But in our particular case, there are two public water supplies that basically are adjacent to each other … and between us there are probably 15 to 20 active water wells that are used to produce water to meet the needs of our customers.”

The Argyle Water Supply Corp. board will consider whether to protest the disposal well when it meets later this month, general manager Randall Davis said.

“I expect that we probably will support their [Bartonville’s] position,” Davis said. “The main factor for us is that … the railroad commission cannot guarantee that that disposal well will never have a problem and cause environmental damage.”

The formal protests of the disposal well will force a two-step hearing process before the railroad commission, where three elected commissioners will have the final say. No hearing date had been set.

The Williams spokesman said the compressor facility is allowed by rule and would require only notification of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality when operations begin. A spokesman with the state environmental commission said he had no record of the project.

Ramona Nye, a spokeswoman for the railroad commission, said compressor operators generally must apply for a pipeline operating permit and submit an organizational report to the commission. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Bosque had filed that paperwork.

Officials with Williams and Bosque say the public would benefit from centralized locations for gas compression and wastewater disposal, for aesthetic and practical reasons. For example, Bosque plans to send wastewater to the disposal well through underground pipes, limiting the need for gas drillers to haul it by truck on public roads to other disposal sites, the company’s president said.

“We understand the public interest in this,” said Swan, the Williams spokesman. “By the same token, companies are getting very savvy to the need to do everything possible to develop in a responsible way. I know that is a standard that we live and work by.”

The railroad commission has no record of enforcement actions or pending field violations against either company, Nye said.

Contamination fears

When companies extract oil and gas from deep in the ground, they also get brine as a natural byproduct. It’s essentially salt water, but it can also contain toxic metals and radioactive substances, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Oil- and gas-producing states require operators to inject the fluids back underground to minimize the risk to soil, lakes and streams. Operators also sometimes inject brine into gas wells to re-establish pressure and allow more production.

In Texas, the railroad commission oversees more than 50,000 permitted oil and gas injection and disposal wells, including nine in Denton County. Other than brine, injected fluids can also include small amounts of drilling mud, fracturing and well treatment chemicals, and residual hydrocarbons from oil and natural gas, according to the railroad commission.

State regulators and oil and gas industry representatives say the wells are safe and highly regulated.

The state requires several layers of casing to lower the risk of leaks, including a concrete-encased steel pipe that extends from the ground to below the deepest level of drinkable groundwater, according to the railroad commission.

“Specifically, for disposal or any well fluid to affect the usable-quality water, a leak would have to occur outside of a well bore and go through several layers of protection,” Nye said in an e-mail.

Bosque Disposal Systems’ disposal well near Argyle would pipe in produced water for injection into the Ellenburger formation, a porous rock layer beneath the Barnett Shale natural gas field and directly below the impermeable Viola formation, said company president Clane Lacrosse.

“It’s all monitored on a daily basis for pressure and consistency,” he said. “You don’t have those types of spills” that contaminate groundwater.

Critics say there’s always a chance, however small, that something could go wrong. The odds of winning the lottery are low, too, but someone still wins, said Dona Schroetke, an Argyle Town Council member.

“I don’t want to play lottery with our drinking water,” she said.

Public water wells in Chico, Aledo and Hudson Oaks were recently shut down after state regulators alerted local officials to increased levels of radiation since 2006, according to media reports. Some local residents and officials said they suspected the problems were related to gas drilling activities, including a malfunctioning disposal well in Chico, but state environmental officials said they found no conclusive link.

“TCEQ has conducted this investigation and have told our staff that there is no link to natural gas, as they have not found the presence of hydrocarbons that would be expected with oil or gas field contamination in the water,” railroad commission spokeswoman Nye said in an e-mail. “TCEQ has determined that the radiation found is naturally occurring.”

Much of central Texas, including Argyle, sits atop the Trinity aquifer. The water moves very slowly underground, meaning any pollution could affect the area for years, said Davis, who manages the Argyle water corporation.

Water suppliers could buy more lake water to supplement the loss of underground supplies, but many rural residents wouldn’t have that option, Davis said. More than half of the state still gets its drinking water from underground supplies.

Davis said one of his main concerns is for farmers and ranchers, who often aren’t close to city water lines and rely on aquifers for their operations to survive.

“They’re the forgotten group,” he said.

The proposals

The Argyle-area site targeted for the gas facilities borders West Jeter Road — east of U.S. Highway 377. Denton County records list the landowner as Mockingbird Pipeline LP, a sister company of Williams that bought the property in August.

The site is adjacent to property owned by Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe, a reporter for the Denton Record-Chronicle who covers the natural gas industry.

If the disposal well is approved, Bosque would buy part of the site to build and operate the well. Company officials hope to build a dumping facility next to a major highway to serve the site, Lacrosse said.

“We would look at having trucks come to other locations, but certainly not that [disposal well] location,” he said. “That is the purpose of it — to have it actually reduce truck traffic for those types of areas.”

The disposal well could handle up to 25,000 barrels per day, the equivalent of more than 1 million gallons. In its application to the railroad commission, the company said it expected to dump an average of 25,000 barrels daily, but Lacrosse called that number “speculative.”

“I doubt we’ll do that much,” he said.

Lacrosse said it’s too early to discuss details of the project, including where pipelines would be built and which companies would use the well.

“We would buy that land from Williams, but the customers could be anybody,” he said.

Williams would like to use the disposal well, but the company is moving forward with the compressors regardless of Bosque’s plans, said Swan, the Williams spokesman.

Compressor stations are used to maintain pressure in natural gas pipelines as the gas is transported to market.

The site is expected to house four compressors, fed by a network of pipelines, that would serve roughly 20 gas wells that Williams is drilling or plans to drill in the Argyle area, Swan said.

“We can develop those 20 wells from two different sites,” he said. “Rather than having to put compressors at each of those two sites, we want to centralize what would occur in two places onto one.”

Swan provided a schematic drawing showing the proposed compressors housed in three side-by-side, barn-like structures. The structures, already tested in Flower Mound, cut noise from the compressors significantly, he said. For someone standing outside the barn, the sound would be no louder than a home air conditioning unit, Swan said.

Williams also plans to save trees around the site’s perimeter as a natural buffer, Swan said.

Gas pipeline operators have a statutory right of eminent domain in Texas. Swan said Williams has bought pipeline easements to serve the site and won’t need to condemn land.

“We’re just about ready to start construction on the pipelines, meaning we have just about everything we need through private right of way,” he said.

Separately, Williams hopes to drill 100 new gas wells in Flower Mound and is asking city leaders there to approve plans for a centralized compressor and wastewater collection facility, Swan said. That facility would pool wastewater from Flower Mound gas wells and store it in aboveground tanks for later disposal elsewhere — including, potentially, the proposed disposal well near Argyle, he said.

“That would be an option, but it’s not essential to our Flower Mound operation,” Swan said.

Williams Production is an active operator in Argyle and Flower Mound, and several local officials have signed mineral leases with the company.

The proposed disposal well site is outside city limits, and the county has no zoning authority to prevent incompatible land uses, said Denton County Commissioner Andy Eads.

Eads, whose precinct includes the area, said he shared residents’ concerns about potential pollution and traffic. He said he’s secured a pledge from Williams officials to attend a public meeting and answer questions about the project. He also planned to invite officials from Bosque, the railroad commission and the state environmental commission.

No meeting date had been set.

Leggieri, of the Bartonville water group, said state leaders seem to be sending mixed signals on water quality issues. Denton, Collin and Cooke counties recently created a regional groundwater conservation district in response to a state mandate to protect water sources.

“We have this crisis in Denton, Collin and Cooke counties where we really need to make sure that we are careful with the amount of water and really treat it as the precious resource that it is,” Leggieri said. “And then they are going to come in and allow someone to stick one of these [disposal] wells down between two groundwater producers? To me, the potential is a lot greater for something happening in that well than it is for someone contracting bladder cancer from a trace element that they hold our feet to the fire on. It seems hypocritical to me.”

Leggieri also said he didn’t understand why operators wouldn’t rather build the disposal well closer to drilling activity in Flower Mound.

“If you want the dog, you get the fleas with it,” he said. “What seems to be happening is, we’re getting the fleas over here and somebody else is getting the dog.”

LOWELL BROWN can be reached at 940-566-6882. His e-mail address is lmbrown@dentonrc.com.