From The Trinidad Times (Randy Woock):
The proposed SWSP was outlined in a July 22 letter to the companies from the Division of Water Resources. The letter notes that, as of December 2009, about 2,600 CBM wells in the Raton and Vermejo formations were considered to have an impact on tributary waters in the Raton Basin. A total of about 3,068 CBM wells operate within the Central Raton Basin…
The letter gives the average pumping rate of all active CBM wells in the affected areas in 2008 to have been about 2.95 gallons per minute (gpm). “For production through 2008, 95 percent of the pumping rates were below 12.6 gpm per well,” it states. “Estimated water production from potential new tributary CBM wells was determined…(e)ach new well perforated in the Raton Basin was assigned a pumping rate of approximately 12 gpm (6 gpm for the Upper Raton Formation and 6 gpm for the lower Raton Formation.” Depletion amounts were calculated using MODFLOW, an industry standard numeric groundwater flow modeling code also used by the U.S. Geological Survey. A 2008 study of the impact of area CBM wells on the Purgatoire River, commissioned by Pioneer and XTO, had found…
Monthly depletions in the affected area for the SWSP’s effective period of April 2010 to March 2011 were estimated as 0.105 acre-feet of water. Depletions caused by CBM pumping prior to 2008 combined with the estimated depletions, figured as a maximum estimated production of tributary water through the plan’s validity endpoint of March 31, 2011, are projected at 4.126 acre-feet. The SWSP, as approved by the SEO, calls for replacement water to come from, “a lease with the City of Trinidad to supply up to 50 acre-feet of fully consumable water from the city’s storage account in Trinidad Reservoir.”[…]
Karen Brown, Pioneer’s senior public relations adviser, told the Las Animas County Board of Commissioners at its Aug. 17 meeting that Pioneer was considering at least five different methods to measure water produced from its wells, including those purchased over the past 15 years from, “numerous operators who, at the time the wells were drilled, did not foresee such a change in regulations that would give the (SEO) jurisdiction over the CBM water production.” She added that Pioneer did already take flow measurements at its wells, discharge points and injection wells, and that it should have completed in the next 30-60 days the tests on the five aforementioned methods to determine which it would utilize to meet the SEO’s water measuring requirements. “Our job is really to ensure that the accuracy of these methods meets the (SEO’s) standards,” she said. Brown also said that more than 700 of Pioneer’s CBM wells produced less than 1 gpm of water. “It’s hard to really gauge that kind of flow,” she said. “Obviously, we want to really assess all of the different options because any one of these things will pose significant costs to the company.”
Additionally, Pioneer, XTO Energy and Red River Ranches hired earlier this year the environmental engineering and consulting company, Tetra Tech, to install and monitor on the Purgatoire River and its tributaries a system of water data monitoring stations. The system, in place for the next two year, includes nine continuous monitoring stations and 25 monthly monitoring stations to collect data on such things as flow levels, temperature, pH and chloride levels, sodium absorption levels and the water’s electrical conductivity levels.