From the Aspen Daily News (Brent Gardner-Smith):
“Impacts from oil shale development to water resources could result from disturbing the ground surface during the construction of roads and production facilities, withdrawing water from streams and aquifers for oil shale operations, underground mining and extraction, and discharging waste waters from oil shale operations,” states the GAO report, which was released in October.
The report was prepared at the request of the U.S. House Science Committee, according to Mark Gaffigan, the GAO director of natural resources and environment. “With oil shale, there is a lot of uncertainty,” Gaffigan said, especially as the technology needed to turn rock into oil is expensive and complicated…
“Oil shale development could have significant impacts on the quality and quantity of water resources, but the magnitude of these impacts is unknown because technologies are years from being commercially proven, the size of a future oil shale industry is uncertain, and knowledge of current water conditions and groundwater flow is limited,” the report found. “In the absence of effective mitigation measures, water resources could be impacted from ground disturbances caused by the construction of roads and production facilities, withdrawing water from streams and aquifers for oil shale production, underground mining and extraction; and discharging waters produced from or used in operations.”
It takes water to extract and process the oil shale, water to upgrade the oil shale so it can be transported to a refinery, water to reclaim mine sites, water to generate electricity for the extraction process, and water to meet the residential needs of a growing workforce in the oil shale industry. “Water for most of these activities is likely to come from nearby streams and rivers because it is more easily accessible and less costly to obtain than groundwater,” the report states. “Withdrawing water from streams and rivers would decrease flows downstream and could temporarily degrade downstream water quality by depositing sediment within the stream channels as flows decrease.” The White, Yampa, and Colorado rivers could all be affected by oil shale production, either by serving as the source for water or as the catch-all for polluted surface and ground water…
The GAO also found that ExxonMobil owns “conditional storage capacities of over 161,000 acre-feet on 17 proposed reservoirs in the area.” And if there is not enough water in the White and the Yampa, the Colorado River is just south of the Western Colorado’s oil shale epicenter. “At least one company has considered obtaining surface water from the even-more-distant Colorado River, about 30 to 50 miles to the south of the research, demonstration, and development leases where oil shale companies already hold considerable water rights,” the report states, noting that the costs of transporting and pumping water from the Colorado River would be higher than using water from the White and the Yampa rivers. And it says that some experts think the Green River could be a source of water for oil shale development in eastern Utah…
The GAO report recommends that the Department of Interior “establish comprehensive baseline conditions for water resources” in oil shale country, that it produce a model of groundwater movement in the region, and that it coordinate water research with the Department of Energy.