The Fayettevill Shale

[jdmidwest]

In Al's defense, he comes from the Lead Belt region of Missouri. Mining in this area is not subtle at all. Huge mounds of chat from mines laced with lead that leaches out every time it rains and the wind blows. Huge pit mines for lead, tiff, iron ore, and other minerals that are left behind when the companies pulled out in the 50's and 60's. Most left mining structures to rust in hulks and lots of tailings. Runoff affects streams and groundwater, and will continue to do so for a long time in the future. Even bore holes were left with the casings sticking out 2 foot or more to trip over or to snag a boat floating over them. This is the ugly side of mining, and fortunately, regulations prevent this from happening now.

There will be a possibility of some new exploration in our neck of the woods. A plant started up a few years ago at Brewer, Mo. that produces a material for Fracting oil or methane out of the ground. My assumption is that it will be used locally and not trucked off somewhere else. Missouri has beds of oil, methane, and coal left to be tapped. If oil prices rise again, no doubt there will be some exploration of it in Missouri. Now, in the bootheel, Uranium is being explored for mining as we speak.

Here are some good papers from the MODNR website, the Geologic Column of Missouri

The Geologic Column of Missouri

[Al Agnew]

Thanks, Jd, you did a good job of describing the Old Lead Belt and surrounding areas. Indeed, even in the "New" Lead Belt out around Bixby and Viburnum, there were a lot of bad practices. I have little faith in the lead companies even today.

Those bore holes sure make floating Big River more interesting. Some come up right in the middle of the river, although with most of those the pipes are almost completely rusted away. However, there are many just off the river in the bottoms. When the mines were abandoned, they gradually filled with ground water, and now the water is coming up out of those bore holes just like they were springs. When the mines were operating, most of the real springs along the river dried up, since the water was being continually pumped out of the mines and kept ground water levels low. The pumped water entered the river in several places, and actually made up at least a third of the volume of the river in low summer water levels. When the mines stopped pumping, the river lost that one third of low water flow for about 10-15 years, and was MUCH lower in the summer. But once the mines finally filled and the water started coming out of the old bore holes, the river regained PART of its historic volume, though not all of it.

As I understand my geology, it is usually Pennsylvanian or younger rock formations which produce oil and gas, and most of the Missouri Ozarks consists of older rocks than that. However, there is some Pennsylvanian formations along the northern Ozark border and western regions of the state. I would be surprised if there is any appreciable gas in the Brewer area, given the geology.

[jdmidwest]

Click on the link from the MODNR and look at the summer 07 issue regarding oil. Much of SE Mo and areas north of I-70 contain beds that may contain oil and natural gas.

I hope they never mine the lead deposits around the 11pt watershed.

[Quillback]

Got this out of the Arkansas Gazette, at least the state seems to be monitoring what is going on.

A second facility used to store and dispose of discarded water used by natural gas drillers can no longer accept the wastewater, the director of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality said Tuesday.

A property owner reported seeing dead fish on his property near the Griffithville disposal site operated by Searcy-based Central Arkansas Disposal, said Teresa Marks, director of the Department of Environmental Quality.

After investigating, the department issued an emergency order Friday after an inspection found a "large unlined, unpermitted waste treatment reservoir," being filled through an underground pipe from the licensed facility, the emergency order states.

On Dec. 3, the department closed a wastewater storage and disposal facility near Carlisle for improperly applying the water onto farmland.

Marks imposed a moratorium on new permits for drill fluid storage facilities until a study is completed examining the effects the operations have on soils and waterways. She said Central Arkansas Disposal was already scheduled for sampling.

The director said the complaint coincided with the ongoing study.

"We did have some sampling that was part of the scientific study, but also had a complaint about a reservoir that a citizen was concerned about," she said. "We went out to test as a result of the complaint and determined that it had high a level of chlorides."

The manager of Central Arkansas Disposal, Ron Carl, was traveling out-of-state Tuesday and was unavailable for comment, according to a man who answered the phone at the company's office in Searcy.

The unpermitted reservoir was emptying into Raft Creek, the emergency order says and an employee from Central Arkansas Disposal "stated that the fluid within the reservoir was from the Central Arkansas Disposal facility. The employee did not know if the fluid reached the reservoir by pumping or gravity flow."

A water sample also found high chloride levels in the stream. The creek feeds the Steve Wilson/Raft Creek Wildlife Management Area in White County.

Mike Armstrong, chief of fisheries for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said because the fish found on the landowners property had been dead for at least a week or more, it was hard to determine the magnitude of the fish kill in the creek.

"We did delineate that between a one-mile and two-mile stretch of the creek was affected," Armstrong said. "We found several largemouth bass up to 4 pounds and quality sized crappie so there was a robust fish population in those ditches."

Armstrong said the commission would study data on similar habitats to make an estimation of how many fish should be in the area.

"I would suspect that kill would be in the thousands with dead bass in the 2- to 4-pound range," he said.

Land farms consist of at least two large plastic-lined ponds that hold drilling fluid - which is mainly water and rock sediment discarded during drilling. After obtaining a permit from the department, land farm owners are allowed to irrigate crops with the fluid, after sending samples to the department.

The fluid is generated by companies drilling for natural gas in the Fayetteville Shale, a geologic formation that stretches from north-central Arkansas to the Mississippi River. The formation is expected to have a $22 billion impact on the Arkansas economy by 2012, according to a University of Arkansas study.

Marks said she is unaware of any drinking water in the area that could be affected, but that the company now faces a penalty of up to $10,000 per day of being in violation of its permit.

She said the emergency order simply calls for the company to cease operation, but enforcement action will follow.

"We have a matrix at the water department and we can plug in such information as whether or not harm was done to the environment; whether or not it was an intentional act and whether or not the company has a history of violations, things like that."