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High Court takes on waste dump issue near Pine Ridge






COURTESY/ToxfreeA vacuum truck sprays drilling mud on the land to disperse it, allowing soils microbial action to break down toxics, in what is known by the oil-and-gas industry as land-farming.

COURTESY/ToxfreeA vacuum truck sprays drilling mud on the land to disperse it, allowing soils microbial action to break down toxics, in what is known by the oil-and-gas industry as land-farming.

VERMILLION –– The state Supreme Court has asked to hear oral arguments at the University of South Dakota Law School on Oct. 7, regarding a citizens’ referendum to prevent Wyoming oil industry drilling waste from being dumped in Fall River County, South Dakota, adjacent to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The general public is welcome to attend, according to Cheryl Fair, a county resident among those who gathered more than 250 petition signatures to successfully place the referendum on the ballot in the Nov. 4 general election for the purpose of overturning the county commission’s June 2014 approval of the waste handling project.

Fall River County is sandwiched between the Wyoming state line and Oglala Lakota (formerly Shannon) County, which shares its boundaries with the reservation.
Clint and Keith Andersen of Andersen Engineering, together with High Plains Resources LLC, a Belle Fourche-based company of five brothers originally from Edgemont, gained permission from the county commission for the firm to receive and process petroleum-contaminated materials in their hometown.

The votes on the referendum challenging the permission have not yet been counted, pending the outcome of the case on appeal to the Supreme Court after South Dakota Seventh Circuit Judge Robert Mandel ruled in favor of High Plains Resources LLC’s argument that the commission approval was not subject to reversal by referendum due to the way the laws are written.
High Plains Resources LLC’s CEO and attorney Kenneth Barker was set to argue against citizens’ lawyer Jim Sword at the Vermillion Supreme Court hearing, on what could become the first facility of its type in South Dakota.

The federal government does not regulate the drilling waste, so the state’s intervention is final. In addition to the county commission approval, a permit also would require endorsement from the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources, as well as state Game, Fish and Parks Department’s input. 

The proposed operation would consist of what is known as soil land-farming, a waste-management practice in which oil and gas wastes in the form of used drilling mud are mixed with or applied to the land surface in a contained area.

According to the federal government’s Argonne National Laboratory,  soil land-farming — or the repeated application of drilling wastes to the land — allows the soil’s naturally occurring microbial population to metabolize, transform, and assimilate waste constituents in place. It is a form of bioremediation.

The drilling mud from oil and gas wells usually is composed of bentonite clay, water, diesel and mineral oil. The slurry also contains organic material to stabilize it, such as lignite, and a material to boost density, such as barite, according to John McFarland, a shareholder at Graves, Dougherty, Hearon & Moody in Austin, Texas, who specializes in representing land and mineral owners in oil-and-gas.

The drilling mud is forced down into a wellbore hole, carrying the cuttings made by a drill bit back up and out of the shaft. The mixture helps cool the bit and coats the outside of the open hole to help seal off porous geologic strata. 

The content of disposed drilling mud varies with conditions in the hole and the formations being drilled.

Texas A&M’s AgriLife Extension Service warns of risks and hazards of land-farming in a study concluding: Oil in excess of 1 percent of the volume of the waste is generally toxic to plants.  Salts in drilling fluid can be detrimental to soils. The mud can contain boron, arsenic, barium, chromium, copper, lead, nickel and other heavy metals that are harmful in certain concentrations.

A&M recommends that any decision to allow land-farming should specify testing protocols for possible harmful elements, both in the soil and in the drilling fluids; specification of the proper rate of application, requirements of soil amendments to promote waste treatment; terms for mixing the waste into the soil; re-seeding and reclamation when the land-farming is complete, and performance assurance bonding.

(Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.com)


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