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What Happened at Fernow
When I learned about the landspraying debacle at Fernow Experimental Forest I made a few phone calls in February. Some of what I'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. (I believe the well was drilled using underbalanced techniques and was without a conventional blowout preventer, thus the plug.) 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.
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. I was 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.
I believe a contributing cause of vegetation death was high chlorides, an incredibly large amount of salt 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 levels they encountered when testing pit waste. They had found a low level of chlorides (4,880 mg/l on June 19) but tested a much higher level than Berry's DMR results during discharge (13,500 to 14,250 mg/l on June 20). The high level 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 level of chlorides in the fluids, that means almost double the chloride load than Berry's DMR indicated.
What is a 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 the major cause of plant mortality, just as I believe the extremely low pH fracture flowback was a contributing cause during the earlier incident.
I 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 produced is much higher.
In these posts I've focused on chlorides, sodium, and to a lesser degree pH. This doesn't mean that dangerous chemicals used during drilling aren't an issue, they are. But I don't believe that exotic chemicals were the cause of vegetation dieback.
Here's a quote from a monograph by T. T. Kozlowski:
This spring Forest Service researchers will begin to be able to determine how extensive the landspraying and fracture flowback damage will turn out to be.
Sources:
Howat, D. R. 2000. Acceptable Salinity, Sodicity and pH Values for Boreal Forest Reclamation. Edmonton, Alberta: Alberta Environment, Environmental Sciences Division, Report # ESD/LM/00-2.
T. T. Kozlowski. 1997. Responses of Woody Plants to Flooding and Salinity. Tree Physiology Monograph No. 1. Victoria, Canada: Heron Publishing.
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. (I believe the well was drilled using underbalanced techniques and was without a conventional blowout preventer, thus the plug.) 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.
- 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.)
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. I was 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.
I believe a contributing cause of vegetation death was high chlorides, an incredibly large amount of salt 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 levels they encountered when testing pit waste. They had found a low level of chlorides (4,880 mg/l on June 19) but tested a much higher level than Berry's DMR results during discharge (13,500 to 14,250 mg/l on June 20). The high level 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 level of chlorides in the fluids, that means almost double the chloride load than Berry's DMR indicated.
What is a 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 the major cause of plant mortality, just as I believe the extremely low pH fracture flowback was a contributing cause during the earlier incident.
I 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 produced is much higher.
In these posts I've focused on chlorides, sodium, and to a lesser degree pH. This doesn't mean that dangerous chemicals used during drilling aren't an issue, they are. But I don't believe that exotic chemicals were the cause of vegetation dieback.
Here's a quote from a monograph by T. T. Kozlowski:
- 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)
This spring Forest Service researchers will begin to be able to determine how extensive the landspraying and fracture flowback damage will turn out to be.
Sources:
Howat, D. R. 2000. Acceptable Salinity, Sodicity and pH Values for Boreal Forest Reclamation. Edmonton, Alberta: Alberta Environment, Environmental Sciences Division, Report # ESD/LM/00-2.
T. T. Kozlowski. 1997. Responses of Woody Plants to Flooding and Salinity. Tree Physiology Monograph No. 1. Victoria, Canada: Heron Publishing.
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