By Kelly Young

kyoung@jacksonvilleprogress.com

The Neches and Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District in October gave permission to Brookside Storage LCC to drill two of the eight wells it needed to create and maintain an underground hydrocarbon storage facility in northwest Anderson County.

The district made the issuance of the other six permits contingent on the results of a hydro-geologic study to determine the impact Brookside’s project would have on the local aquifers.

At a special meeting held Monday afternoon, the district heard the results of that study and took action to approve the remaining drilling permits — but did not issue operating permits for any of the eight applications.

John Seifert, of LBG-Guyton Associates, the firm selected by the district to conduct the study, presented the results at Monday’s meeting.

According to Seifert, the Brookside project would require about 1,500 gallons of water per minute be pumped from the Upper Wilcox Aquifer and another 3,000 gallons per minute be pumped from the Middle Wilcox Aquifer for a period of four years.

While he said existing wells that utilize the Queen City, Reklaw and Carrizo aquifers would suffer “virtually no effect” from this project, other wells in the Upper and Middle Wilcox will see a much greater impact.

“For the Upper Wilcox, the model is predicting a maximum amount of drawdown of about 160 feet, with that decreasing to 60 feet about two miles out and to 10 feet about seven miles out,” Seifert said. “The Middle Wilcox showed a maximum effect of 210 feet of drawdown, with the effects also greatest near the wells and decreasing with distance.”

Total pumping in Anderson County is currently at about 7,800 acre feet per year. The Brookside project itself would pump an additional 7,258 acre feet from the aquifer for the next four years. After that time, additional pumping would be needed only sparingly in order to reseal and reshape the dome.

While he called this amount of drawdown considerable, Seifert pointed out both aquifers were relatively quick to recover.

“When there is a cessation in the pumping the model shows that the aquifers’ water level recovery in two years is almost as great as the drawdown was in four years. Within two years of cessation, water levels will be back within 10 to 20 feet of where they were prior to pumping,” he said.

Brookside’s proposed plan is to use the district’s groundwater to create a large cavity in the Bethel Salt Dome for the purpose of storing natural gas. The wells used to create the storage caverns would be located in northwestern Anderson County, but could also impact wells using the Upper and Middle Wilcox aquifers in parts of Henderson and Freestone counties.

Representatives from several entities with water interests in the vicinity of Brookside were on-hand Monday to express concern about how the new wells would impact them.

“There are significant short-term impacts on the aquifers from this, but the model indicated that there are a limited number of wells in the area that are going to need pump lowering or upgrading in order to maintain pumping rates,” Seifert said. “We recommend that water levels be monitored periodically in proximity to the planned pumping to access the response of the aquifer to the pumping.”

The district unanimously passed a motion to issue drilling permits to Brookside for their six remaining wells, but declined to OK the accompanying operating permits until a plan has been decided upon to mitigate the impact of the pumping on the aquifer.

“We see the need to include some special conditions for the operating permits, but I don’t think we are at the point today to specify exactly what those conditions will be,” said John Stover, the district’s attorney. “I think the study by LBG-Guyton did a good job of identifying the issues that need taken care of — monitoring and mitigation. We have started drafting the special conditions, and we can start working out the details on those today.”

A public hearing will need to be held when the board considers approval of the project’s eight operating permits.

The NTV Groundwater Conservation District regularly meets at 1:30 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month at their offices at 212 S. Main St. in Jacksonville. The public is invited to attend all meetings.