Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 154, Ed. 1 Tuesday, January 3, 2017 Page: 5 of 16
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5A
Denton Record-Chronicle
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Charity controlled by Branstad misses deadline
BRIEFLY
ACROSS THE NATION
tion to a sixth term as governor.
The rest will go toward an en-
dowment fund for college schol-
arships.
Because the group is a pri-
vate foundation, the IRS re-
quires it to annually disclose the
names of anyone who gave
$5,000 or more. Contributors
who donated in 2014 were dis-
closed in that year’s tax return,
filed in November 2015. But
those who contributed in 2015
— when $1.1 million rolled in —
have been kept secret amid de-
lays in disclosure.
The charity’s 2015 return was
due May 15, but it received an
automatic three-month exten-
sion. The group applied for a
second three-month extension
through Nov. 15 — the only addi-
tional time allowed — saying it
was “waiting for additional in-
formation needed from a third
party.” It finally filed its return
Nov. 15 listing amounts raised
and spent but disclosing only
one contributor: Des Moines-
based Principal Financial
Group, which gave $25,000.
Tampa, Fla.
Dog attacks family
trying to dress it
Police in Florida say an angry
dog sent three people to the hos-
pital after one tried to put a
sweater on it.
Tampa police say the pit bull
mix named Scarface bit a 52-
year-old woman who was trying
to dress him on Friday and her
husband was attacked while try-
ing to pull the dog off of her. Po-
lice say the couple’s 22-year-old
son was attacked while trying to
stop the dog by stabbing it in the
neck and head.
The three people escaped the
house and left the dog in the
backyard.
By Ryan J. Foley
Associated Press
IOWA CITY, Iowa - A char-
ity controlled by Iowa Gov. Terry
Branstad missed a legal dead-
line for disclosing the names of
donors who paid for his 2015 in-
augural celebration, keeping
them secret even as he prepares
to become the U.S. ambassador
to China.
Tax experts say the lack of
disclosure could subject the
charity to IRS penalties of $100
per day retroactive to Nov. 15,
when the information was due.
It also means that weeks after
President-elect Donald Trump
named Branstad to the impor-
tant diplomatic post, the public
doesn’t know the identities ofin-
dividuals and corporations who
wrote checks totaling roughly $1
million to fund the Republican
governor’s inauguration and
namesake college scholarships.
Branstad-Reynolds
Scholarship Fund was founded
after Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim
Reynolds won election in 2010
to raise private money to pay for
*.-*1
t.
— The Associated Press
From Page 1A
Charlie Litchfield/AP file photo
Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and his wife, Christine, are intro-
duced Jan. 16 during the governor’s inaugural ball in Des
Moines, Iowa.
Council
their bid for a short period of
time — 90 days to six months,
for example — because the price
of construction materials can
change for the contractor and
subcontractors.
The city staff recommended
awarding the contract to Ratliff
Construction, which bid about
$4.8 million on the project.
In a December workshop
meeting, Mayor Chris Watts
questioned the cost of the pro-
ject and the bid award, saying it
was too high per square foot.
Ratliff was not the lowest
bidder. Another firm bid about
$100,000 less for the job.
Staff writer Julian Gill
contributed to this report.
PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE
can be readied at 940-566-
6881 and via Twitter at
a@phwolfeDRC.
their 2011 inauguration. Bran-
stad pledged that the leftover
money would be used to award
$30,000 annually in scholar-
ships for Iowa college students,
although it has fallen short of
that goal.
If confirmed by the U.S. Sen-
ate as ambassador to China,
Branstad plans to resign as gover-
nor and be replaced by Reynolds.
After winning re-election in
2014, the administration again
used the group for inaugural
fundraising, bringing in $1.5
million. About $500,000 went
to pay for an inaugural ball in
Des Moines and other events in
January 2015 that celebrated
Branstad’s unprecedented elec-
The
From Page 1A
Wells
(Well operators plug the vast
majority of inactive wells on
their own. In 2016, they funded
94 percent of all Texas pluggings
— leaving the rest to the Rail-
road Commission, according to
agency data.)
Industry representatives play
down the severity of the growing
orphaned well count — a fluid
list that includes thousands of
wells in less problematic condi-
tions and a few that don’t neces-
sarily need plugging.
“A portion of the orphaned
wells in Texas are considered as-
sets with future production val-
ue,” Ed Longanecker, president
of the Texas Independent Pro-
ducers and Royalty Owners,
said in an email. “These wells are
routinely acquired by other op-
erators.”
And some wells could even-
tually escape the list if their own-
ers simply renew their lapsed
permits.
But ahead of what promises
to be a tight-fisted Texas legisla-
tive session, the Railroad Com-
mission is making it known that
it’s bleeding cash and needs
more money for cleanups and
other core duties.
During the drilling slow-
down, the agency said it’s col-
lecting less revenue from its
chief source: industry taxes and
fees. That has forced a 21 percent
cut ($16 million) to the “Oil and
Gas Regulation Cleanup Fund,”
which foots the bill for plugging
and other activities.
To avoid more cuts, the agen-
cy is asking Texas lawmakers for
a two-year cash infusion of
about $45 million and the abil-
ity to keep some of the gas utility
taxes it collects, according to a
memo written by Commission
Chairman Christi Craddick’s of-
fice and backed by her two fel-
low commissioners.
The current funding ap-
proach “is not sustainable for the
long-term welfare of the agency
or the oil and gas industry and
can lead to health and safety is-
sues that the state must avoid,”
the memo says.
State Rep. Drew Darby, R-
San Angelo, who chairs his
chamber’s Energy Resources
Committee and formerly sat on
the powerful Appropriations
Committee, said he would listen
closely to such arguments in a
session with many high-profile
priorities competing for fund-
crumbling church, sits what lo-
cals call Boehmer Lake. It’s not
really a lake, and you wouldn’t
want to wade in it. Its waters
have tested more than three
times saltier than averages in the
Gulf of Mexico, with sulfur and
salt crystals coating the sur-
rounding vegetation. It attracts
birds that don’t seem to belong
here.
Environmental Quality, said his
agency has no plugging respon-
sibilities either — for water wells
or any other types. It appears no
state agency has such a role.
“That’s the biggest problem
we have,” said Van Deventer. “No
one wants to claim responsibili-
r
i
ty-
Looking for trouble
Groundwater officials like
Edwards and his boss, Paul
Weatherby, spend plenty of time
searching for abandoned wells.
Often by truck, once in a
while by plane, and sometimes
just using Google maps, they
scour Pecos County for drilling
leftovers that could pollute wa-
ter. They try to gather as much
information as they can about
each well. Who drilled it? Who
last operated it? Who is respon-
sible for shelling out thousands
of dollars to plug it?
The groundwater officials
send whatever they can glean to
the Railroad Commission. The
agency can order companies to
plug abandoned wells and levy
penalties if they don’t. But often,
the responsible party is long
gone — bankrupt, perhaps. In
those cases, the commission,
tapping fees it collects from in-
dustry, might hire a contractor
to plug a well.
“I can’t find any drilling re-
ports or nothing. I just know it’s
here,” Edwards said at one stop
on this day’s tour — a narrow
well surrounded by puddles of
black sludge and hoof prints.
“Looks like the cattle have been
stopping in here. I don’t know if
they’ve been drinking that?”
The hit-and-miss process
can be frustrating, even when it
results in a state-funded clean-
“Isn’t that wonderful?” Ed-
wards asks sarcastically as a re-
porter takes a whiff of the
stench.
The source of the putrid
smell: a well that has gushed for
more than a decade. And it’s on-
ly getting bigger.
“It’s like new wetlands,” said
Gil Van Deventer, an Odessa-
based hydrologist who has ex-
amined the area. “It’s not like
West Texas at all.”
Oil wells are bored through
multiple layers of rock and other
geology, aiming for below where
groundwater pools. The idea is
to tap the oil or gas deposits and
pump them to the surface with-
out letting any seep into other
layers. Oil and gas comes up
through metal piping that helps
keep it from mixing with water
resources. Cementing around
that piping adds more layers of
protection.
At Boehmer Lake, brackish
San Andres aquifer water is
shooting through a corroded
wellhead, mixing with salt and
other minerals on the way out.
Even worse, Van Deventer says,
the area is sinking as water eats
away at underground salts. He
fears a collapse like the “Wink
Sinks,” famously large sinkholes
not far away in Winkler County.
With its own sleuthing and
help from the Railroad Com-
mission, the Middle Pecos
Groundwater Conservation Dis-
trict has discovered that the well
was among dozens that oilmen
drilled around here during the
1930s, ’40s and ’50s — unable to
strike it rich. Ranchers then re-
purposed some of these wells for
irrigation. But they walked away,
leaving the wells subject to
cracks, corrosion and other nat-
ural damage.
The groundwater district has
found about a dozen such un-
plugged wells, including several
that are flowing. Landowners —
some of whom live elsewhere
and own small parcels — are un-
willing or unable to pay for plug-
ging, which would probably cost
hundreds of thousands of dol-
lars more than typical jobs.
Cash-strapped itself, the dis-
trict has asked the Texas Rail-
road Commission to clean them
up. But that agency, which joint-
ly regulates and champions oil
and gas production, says it can’t
plug most of them — even if oil-
men originally drilled them.
“The Railroad Commission
will take action on any well to
plug or repair it, when we have
evidence the well is an aban-
doned oil or gas well,” said Ra-
mona Nye, an agency spokes-
woman. “If the well has been
transferred over for use by a pri-
vate landowner for irrigation or
for a water supply well, the Rail-
road Commission no longer has
jurisdiction or authority to plug
the well.”
Terry Clawson, a spokesman
for the Texas Commission on
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Photos by Rafael Aguilera/For The Texas Tribune
The salty, sulfurous water of Boehmer Lake — a large pool of water flowing from an aban-
doned West Texas well — kills vegetation it touches.
west Research Institute hydrol-
ogist.
Old wells typically offer the
biggest threats because free-
wheeling drillers long ago faced
lax standards and used relatively
weak materials for casing —
meaning the wells do little to
guard water from pollutants.
Mother Nature also exacts a toll.
-j
In Pecos County, “you’re go-
ing to have problems with water
that’s very salty and very corro-
sive,” Edwards said of decades-
old wells. “Once it eats through
the casing, it’s coming to meet
you, then it’s going to mingle
with whatever is above it.”
But some sloppy drilling
techniques aren’t exclusively a
thing of the past, one former
state regulator suggests.
Robert Traylor, a geoscientist
who left the Railroad Commis-
sion’s Groundwater Advisory
Unit in 2015 after more than 20
years at the agency, said that
some drillers cut comers during
the most recent boom — eager
to start pumping after pouring
millions of dollars into horizon-
tal wells.
“Just drill the well as fast as
possible, because they were un-
der such pressure to get cash
flow going,” Traylor said in an in-
terview with the Tribune.
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Edwards recalled one recent
case — a well that was spewing
oil long before he spotted it on a
map that Google had just updat-
ed. “It shouldn’t take me looking
on Google - at something that’s
been happening for two years.”
But he understands that
overworked state regulators
can’t be everywhere on “the big-
gest damn oil patch in the coun-
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A thick black substance paints the land in June around an
abandoned well that the Middle Pecos Groundwater Conser-
vation District has asked the Texas Railroad Commission to
plug.
Contamination
tough to detect
How often do abandoned
wells pollute groundwater?
That’s hard to say.
A 2011 study prepared for the
Oklahoma-based Groundwater
Protection Council cited 30
times that abandoned drilling
sites polluted Texas groundwa-
ter from 1993 to 2008. The Rail-
road Commission told The Tex-
as Tribune that it has not linked
any groundwater contamina-
tion cases to abandoned wells
since 2009.
But experts say pollution can
fester where no one has looked.
In one extreme case decades
ago, an abandoned well leaked
brine for more than 22 years be-
fore someone discovered that it
was polluting groundwater be-
low 400 to 600 acres of Scurry
County, according to a 1990
study by the University of Texas’
Bureau of Economic Geology.
“What happens under-
ground, where you have a con-
taminated aquifer, no one
knows,” said Green, the South-
Fighting the backlog
Texas officials paid little at-
tention to the environmental
— shrunk dramatically during
the 1990s and 2000s.
Totals plunged from nearly
18,000 to 7,000 from 2002 to
Kerry Knorpp, an Amarillo oil
and gas attorney who sat on a
now-inactive state committee
that monitored oilfield cleanup
efforts and offered input to the
Railroad Commission. ‘Wells
were drilled at $110 oil that you
would have never completed
otherwise.”
For now, the state’s orphaned
well list is growing largely be-
cause the Railroad Commission
struggles to keep plugging at its
previous pace.
The commission’s annual re-
ports on oilfield cleanup efforts
describe the conundrum: few
contractors are bidding on state
contracts because more lucra-
tive private industry is luring
them away. During the boom,
these contractors helped com-
panies drill more wells. And
during the industry’s two-year
slowdown? The state can’t com-
pete with private plugging con-
tracts.
dangers of abandoned oil wells
throughout much of state histo-
ry. But in 1992, the Railroad
Commission launched an ag-
gressive plan to plug wells across
Texas — tapping bonds, taxes
and other fees it collected from
drillers. It has since plugged
nearly 31,600 wells at a cost of
more than $243 million, ac-
cording to a commission report
published this month. The agen-
cy evaluates each well based on a
litany of risk factors, and it tries
to plug the riskiest wells first.
At the end of August, the
Railroad Commission was
tracking five leaking abandoned
wells and 589 that it labeled Pri-
ority 2H — a high-risk category
that includes wells that don’t
protect water sources.
The agency’s full stock of “or-
phaned wells” — those that have
been inactive and have lapsed
paperwork for more than a year
mg.
“I just think the Legislature’s
got to recognize — we’ve had a
downturn,” he said. “We’ve got to
have a functioning agency”
But Traylor, the retired Rail-
road Commission geoscientist,
suggested that the agency would
need more than cash to fully ad-
dress the environmental prob-
lem — if you want to call it that.
“The abandoned well issue is
2010.
But the trend has since re-
versed amid a drilling downturn
that followed a years-long bo-
nanza. Texas's total orphaned
well count eclipsed 10,100 in the
2016 fiscal year — the most since
2007. (In September, the Rail-
road Commission narrowed its
definition of such wells, specify-
ing that all must have also vio-
lated another rule for inactive
wells. That purged more than
3,000 wells from the list.)
In recent weeks, West Texas
crude has inched above $50 per
barrel, giving producers hope
that their rough patch will soon
be over. But some experts fore-
see even more abandoned wells
on the horizon.
“There is about to be a tsuna-
mi of abandoned wells,” said
just going to increase with the
number of wells drilled, and it’s
going to become far more com-
plex,” he said. “If you don’t know
how to solve it, it’s beyond call-
ing it a problem. Okay? It’s
called a major crisis.”
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 154, Ed. 1 Tuesday, January 3, 2017, newspaper, January 3, 2017; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1131582/m1/5/?q=%22~1%22~1: accessed August 15, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .