The Texas Railroad Commission has issued permits for nearly 30 new injection wells for oil and gas waste in counties around the Barnett Shale in recent months, including a new injection well in Denton County.

Shale Tank Trucks, of Gainesville, secured a permit for an injection well 1.8 miles north of Stony in western Denton County. Denton County has only one other permitted injection well, operated by Hacker Bro­th­ers Well Service, near Clear Creek north­west of Bol­ivar.

Commission spokeswoman Ra­mona Nye confirmed the injection well near Stony was not yet operational, as the company has more paperwork to complete.

Oil and gas companies truck production waste to injection wells for disposal. Us­ing high pressure, operators push the waste deep underground into certain rock formations, such as sandstone. Cement casings line the path on the way down so that the waste material doesn’t leak into “production zones,” places where other wells are trying to pull up oil, gas — or drinking water.

The new injection well permits come even as the railroad commission shut down an injection well near Boyd in Wise County on Jan. 22. Operated by Hydro-FX, Inc., a subsidiary of Star of Texas Energy Services, about 4 miles west of Boyd, the injection well began to affect production in nearby gas wells prior to its closure.

Once the Hydro-FX well was closed, pressure at the nearby gas wells decreased, according to Nye.

People living on nearby ranches are beginning to have problems with their water wells, too, according to Jim Joling, who lives near the Hydro-FX well.

“I’ve gotten calls from two people near the wells who say their water is bad,” Joling said.

Joling headed up a neighborhood group that fought the initial permitting of the Hydro-FX well in 2003. He said residents had some idea what might happen, knowing a little about the area’s geology and the failure of a similar injection well in Chico at the time.

“That well broke out and the waste came to the surface,” Joling said. “So you know it passed through freshwater tables to get there.”

The neighbors pooled their money to commission an independent hydrologist to study the Hydro-FX plans. That study predicted the failure that has now occurred, Joling said.

He and neighboring ranchers have long been disappointed in the responses of the railroad commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to the neighborhood concerns, Joling said.

Ray Leissner, the EPA liaison to the railroad commission, confirmed that the agency is investigating the injection well failure and possible effects on groundwater, but it would be some time before he would have anything to report.

Meanwhile, Hydro-FX has appealed to the railroad commission about the closure of its injection well. No hearing date has been set, Nye said.

Wise County resident Tracy Smith, whose fight against a Pioneer Exploration permit for an injection well near her home is now with the Texas Supreme Court, said state law is not on the side of individual residents.

She points to two bills currently in the Texas Senate’s Natural Resources Committee, Senate Bills 714 and 715. Both would remove some of the exemptions currently granted to oil and gas companies from groundwater conservation districts. Many officials believe that counties in the Barnett Shale will be required to form such districts in the near future, since rural residents and small cities still rely on wells for drinking water.

Written by Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Arlington, SB 714 would require drillers to report groundwater use for drilling and fracing. This process of forcing sand and water into wells in order to release the gas can use up to 5 million gallons per frac, and as many as 17 fracs for certain kinds of wells. SB 715, also written by Fraser, would require better public notification of proposed injection wells so that the public can participate in the permitting process.

Fraser’s Austin office did not return a telephone call Friday.

Smith said she’s not sure the bills will make it out of committee, but she’s hopeful, as she gets more and more calls from residents in other Barnett Shale counties. She said she’s talked to people in Hill, Hunt, Parker, Tarrant and Denton counties who want to understand what’s happening to groundwater in Wise County.

“It started in Wise County,” Smith said. “People need to see the mistakes made in Wise County and pay attention.”

PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE can be reached at 940-566-6881. Her e-mail address is pheinkel-wolfe@dentonrc.com .

According to the Texas Railroad Commission Web site, about 80 percent of the oil and gas industry’s applications for injection wells are approved. Below is each county’s number of injection wells in Region 9, which take most of the drilling waste from the Bar­nett Shale back underground. The parenthetical number indicates the number of newly permitted wells.

Archer — 3

Clay — 1

Cooke — 7

Denton — 2 (1)

Erath — 1

Grayson — 1

Hamilton — 1 (1)

Hardeman — 7

Hill — 1 (1)

Hood — 8 (4)

Jack — 15

Johnson — 17 (7)

Knox — 2 (1)

Montague — 20 (1)

Parker — 6 (5)

Somervell — 5 (3)

Tarrant — 1 (1)

Wichita — 4

Wilbarger — 2

Wise — 26 (3)

Young — 7

SOURCE: Railroad Commission of Texas, as of March 5.