{"id":27744,"date":"2024-05-10T10:21:16","date_gmt":"2024-05-10T16:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/how-do-you-approve-an-underground-toxic-waste-dump-without-telling-nobody\/"},"modified":"2024-05-10T16:21:16","modified_gmt":"2024-05-10T16:21:16","slug":"how-do-you-approve-an-underground-toxic-waste-dump-without-telling-nobody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/how-do-you-approve-an-underground-toxic-waste-dump-without-telling-nobody\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018How do you approve an underground toxic waste dump without telling nobody?\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Enduring
Enduring Resources wants to convert this water well into an oil waste injection well on land adjacent to the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. Photos by Jerry Redfern\/Capital & Main<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

In late 2022, an oil and gas production company petitioned the state of New Mexico to turn a water well into a waste disposal well in the northwest corner of the state. It sits on a plot of state land surrounded by tribal and federal property, and less than a mile from the family home of a well-known Native rights organizer. Now, a pending decision by the New Mexico State Land Commissioner may nix the project and close another chapter in one person\u2019s continuing fight against oil and gas development on ancestral Native lands.<\/p>\n

The case also highlights the sometimes antiquated laws and overlapping jurisdictions that govern oil and gas production in New Mexico and the difficulty an individual faces when dealing with nearby wells, even when that person is well-versed in the industry.<\/p>\n

Late one night last year, Mario Atencio was researching a paper on New Mexico\u2019s recently extended 20-year moratorium on new oil and gas drilling around Chaco Culture National Historical Park. The long-time Din\u00e9 (Navajo) organizer is a doctoral candidate in Native American Studies at the University of New Mexico, and the park is just down the road from his father\u2019s home on the eastern edge of the Navajo Nation.<\/p>\n

Oil wells and related infrastructure pepper the landscape around his father\u2019s home and the park, and while looking for information about those sites in the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division\u2019s massive online database, he came across paperwork for something unexpected. \u201cI don\u2019t know what keyword search I was doing,\u201d he said, \u201cBut I was \u2018Whoa, what is this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

A Denver-based oil and gas production company, Enduring Resources, had applied to turn a water well in the area into an injection well \u2013 instead of pulling water from the well, the company wanted to inject up to 20,000 barrels a day of toxic wastewater from the oil production process. The well is less than a mile from the Atencio family home.<\/p>\n

Atencio said he \u201ckind of freaked out\u201d because he learned of the proposed conversion just as the project was to be approved by the state\u2019s Oil Conservation Division.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you approve an underground toxic waste dump without telling nobody?\u201d Atencio asks.<\/p>\n

But the company did tell people. Sort of. It followed state rules for oil field waste injection wells, which include a testing and notification process. The testing ensured that the water in the aquifer contained enough dissolved solids that the project wouldn\u2019t fall under a stricter set of rules. The notification, conducted by Enduring Resources, alerted the public and other oil and gas producers in the area to the project and gave them the chance to challenge it. None did, including Atencio or his family, because they never heard about it.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

\u201cOil production well\u201d is a bit of a misnomer in New Mexico \u2013 they are brackish water wells with oil mixed in. On average, such wells in the state produce four barrels of so-called \u201cproduced water\u201d for every barrel of oil, and that can reach 100 or more barrels of water to a single barrel of oil in some places. At least one well close to Chaco Culture National Historical Park produces 300- to-1. The produced water is a toxic mix of salts, other minerals and chemicals used in the drilling process. Spills can sterilize land, poison people or pollute aquifers that provide drinking water, and because of that, produced water is highly regulated and can\u2019t be used for anything outside of oil field operations without a specialized state permit. So companies dispose of it by injecting it deep underground.<\/p>\n

Water is \u201cthe major cultural resource in the region,\u201d Atencio says. \u201cThis is deep underground water \u2026 but it\u2019s still part of the underlying Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

In New Mexico, new injection wells require approval from the Oil Conservation Division, and those on state lands also need approval from the State Land Office. Turning a water supply well into an injection well is not common. Dylan Fuge, acting director of the Oil Conservation Division, said, \u201cThe request by Enduring was unique. There is no known record of a similar request.<\/p>\n

Injection wells have their own sections in both the Oil Conservation Division and State Land Office rule books because of produced water\u2019s toxicity. If a company submits an application for an injection well, Oil Conservation Division rules (the more complex and technical of the two) require the company to directly notify nearby \u201caffected persons\u201d \u2013 well operators or mineral rights owners who may have competing or overlapping rights near the injection well. The Atencio home is less than a mile away on tribal land, and the family also holds mineral rights on that land. Atencio said those rights are managed by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, which may partially explain why the family never heard about the plans for the well.<\/p>\n

Oil Conservation Division rules for affected persons say that if the land in question is tribal land, \u201cthe (Bureau of Land Management), the United States department of the interior, bureau of Indian affairs, and the relevant tribe\u201d should be notified.<\/p>\n

However, Sidney Hill, public information officer with the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, said that the Oil Conservation Division contacted the Bureau of Land Management about the proposed change last August. \u201cUnder our current rules, notice to the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) was not required,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When asked about the notification process, Allison Sandoval, public affairs specialist with the Bureau of Land Management, said, \u201cWe are not able to answer at this time, but will have a response to you as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company also must publish a public notice about the project, giving people 15 days to file an objection or request a hearing. According to the rule, that notice must be printed in a newspaper in the county where the proposed injection well is located.<\/p>\n

\"Mario
Mario Atencio stands in front of a well operation near the Ojo Encino Chapter House on Navajo Tribal lands in New Mexico.Jerry Redfern\/Capital & Main<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Enduring Resources placed an ad in the Rio Rancho Observer, a tiny local paper covering a northern suburb of Albuquerque, more than 100 miles from the well and the Atencios\u2019 family home, in the opposite corner of the county. They never saw the notice. Sandoval County \u2013 where the well sits \u2013 is three times the size of Rhode Island with one-seventh the population. \u201cThey put it in the paper, but the paper was nowhere near the Navajo people,\u201d Atencio said. The biggest paper in the region is in Farmington, bordering tribal lands and 70 miles from the well and the house \u2013 but in neighboring San Juan County.<\/p>\n

All of this underscores what Atencio has been demanding for years: tribal sovereignty and tribal notification. For years, he and other Navajos have fought for greater consultation, notification and transparency between state, federal and local tribal governments over all aspects of oil and gas production in the region, including waste wells and produced water.<\/p>\n

The well sits on one square mile of state land surrounded by tribal and Bureau of Land Management land in the so-called \u201ccheckerboard\u201d region in the eastern reaches of the Navajo Nation. On a map, it looks like it sounds, with one-mile blocks of state, tribal and federal lands jumbled together, each government enforcing its own rules and regulations for oil and gas drilling, production and disposal.<\/p>\n

By the time Atencio contacted the Oil Conservation Division about the well, the division had already issued it a permit. Enduring Resources had retained Brian Egolf \u2013 an attorney who had just stepped down as the Democratic speaker of the New Mexico House of Representatives \u2013 to push the application through the government process. (Egolf left the House following the 2022 session.)<\/p>\n

A review of more than two years of emails between Egolf and the Oil Conservation Division shows the state office trying to follow its rules \u2013 including asking Enduring Resources for extra notifications to two other well operators in the area and the Bureau of Land Management \u2013 while often fielding daily emails from Egolf asking about the permit\u2019s status.<\/p>\n

In February, three months after the well was approved, lawyers from the Western Environmental Law Center and the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the Oil Conservation Division to deny the permit or reopen the 15-day protest period, noting that the division or Enduring \u201cshould have provided notice to the Atencio family, whom, upon information and belief, live on an allotment within half a mile of the proposed well.\u201d They added that the Navajo Times would be \u201ca more appropriate newspaper of general circulation in this region,\u201d because, among other reasons, monolingual Navajo (Din\u00e9 bizaad) speakers \u201cwould not have received or been able to respond to notice posted in English in the Rio Rancho Observer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fuge replied, \u201cAfter a full review of the well file \u2026 I do not find grounds for OCD to reopen this application for protest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Atencio also contacted the State Land Office, asking what could be done to stop the well conversion. On Dec. 14, 2023, Stephanie Garcia Richard, the state land commissioner, issued an executive order extending an existing moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on lands around Chaco Culture National Historical Park by 20 years. The moratorium was aimed primarily at preserving artifacts and landscapes considered sacred to the Navajo and other tribes in the region. That same day, Atencio wrote to the State Land Office, congratulating them on the moratorium and then asking the office to thoroughly review Enduring Resources\u2019 disposal well application, because not doing so \u201cis doubling down on Environmental Racism.\u201d<\/p>\n

In emails with Capital & Main in April, Joey Keefe, assistant commissioner of communications at the New Mexico State Land Office, said, \u201cThe State Land Office is not subject to the State Tribal Collaboration Act.\u201d However, he said, Commissioner Garcia Richard hopes to have formal memorandums of understanding between the State Land Office and each tribe before the end of her term in January 2027. In the meantime, he said, \u201cThe decision of whether to lease or otherwise authorize the use of state trust land belongs to the Commissioner of Public Lands.\u201d And when it comes to the proposed Enduring Resources wastewater injection well, he wrote on April 16 that the company was recently informally notified that \u201cthe Commissioner does not intend to approve this change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Enduring Resources nor Brian Egolf responded to emails and phone messages asking for comment.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Atencio and Enduring Resources already had a history when the company began the well conversion. The company has more than 900 wells in the San Juan Basin of northwest New Mexico, and in February 2019, the company spilled 1,400 barrels of oil mixed with produced water at a well site. That slurry flowed across a dirt road and seeped into a dry streambed that ran by Atencio\u2019s family house. A few days later, another nearby Enduring well caught fire. Atencio says no one received any compensation for the disruption or the pollution of the streambed that cuts through land where one of his cousins runs cattle.<\/p>\n

Six months after the spill, Atencio and others filed a complaint requesting a temporary halt on further oil and gas development in the San Juan Basin of northwest New Mexico, alleging that the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management and other federal officials had improperly permitted new wells. In that case, Enduring intervened as a defendant alongside the government, since the case threatened the company\u2019s oil and gas production. The company\u2019s opening remarks to join the case read \u201cEnduring Resources uses completion technology that results in net-zero use of fresh water and the elimination of venting and flaring.\u201d<\/p>\n

While that may be the case for drilling and preparing new wells, it\u2019s not the case during production. In 2023, Enduring Resources reported venting 27,358 mcf (thousand cubic feet) of case also highlights the sometimes antiquated laws and overlapping jurisdictions that govern oil and gas production in New Mexico natural gas and flaring another 670,556 mcf. According to the EPA\u2019s conservative estimates, that\u2019s equivalent to 12,300 internal combustion engine cars driven for a year. In the end, the government won the case.<\/p>\n

And last summer, Atencio and a representative from Enduring Resources faced off in a Congressional hearing on a Republican bill to strike down an Interior Department ban on drilling permits on federal lands around Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Anita Ashland, a senior land consultant with Enduring Resources, testified that \u201cEnduring has invested over $25.5 million in a water handling system to eliminate the need to vent or flare methane.\u201d (In October, 2023 the EPA hit Enduring Resources with a $185,000 fine for unauthorized emissions.)<\/p>\n

In follow-up questions, Ashland described the 2019 spill near the Atencio home as \u201cundesired, but relatively small\u201d and that blocking oil and gas development around the park would hurt Navajo mineral rights owners.<\/p>\n

Atencio fired back that the permit ban happened with strong support from Native groups, and offered a history lesson: \u201cThroughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Din\u00e9 homelands in Greater Chaco were violently stolen and then reorganized into a checkerboard pattern of federal, state, private, tribal trust, and tribal allotment parcels,\u201d compromising the tribe\u2019s self-determination.<\/p>\n

The Republican bill died.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

When told that Garcia Richard plans to deny the state land easement Enduring Resources needs for the injection well, Atencio said, \u201cI applaud it.\u201d But he sees the process leading up to that point as another chapter in a long history of environmental racism on Native lands.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone needs to be knocked down a peg or two and be told, \u2018Hey \u2013 you\u2019re doing a really bad job, a really shitty job, and it has deep impacts,\u2019\u201d Atencio said.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Keefe said that State Land Office attorneys are drawing up the official notice for Enduring Resources that the injection well will not be approved. And if the company protests or takes the state to court over the issue, Atencio says, \u201cYou gotta face very harsh words from me.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was originally published in Capital & Main<\/a> and is republished here with permission. Capital & Main is an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the most pressing economic, environmental and social issues of our time.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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