Nordheim keeps fighting landfill at its doorstep

AUSTIN — A small DeWitt County community on Tuesday continued its long fight against a proposed oil field landfill.

The issue this time was narrow in focus — whether the site is designed to handle the rainfall during a big storm.

The site would accept such things as water- and oil-based muds, soil contaminated by oil spills, and drill cuttings, the broken bits of rock and dirt that get drilled through on the way to finding oil and gas. During a storm, nothing is allowed to run off the site.

The proposal to build the controversial facility on the outskirts of town has angered the community. Nordheim, with 307 residents and about 100 more people just outside its boundary, gathered nearly 200 letters opposing the site and has sent charter-bus loads of people to Austin for hearings.

In September, the Nordheim school superintendent even brought 11 members of the 14-member class of graduating seniors to Austin for a real-life government lesson at a hearing before the Texas Railroad Commission, followed by a tour of the Capitol.

Residents also formed a group called Concerned About Pollution — the only one of its kind in the Eagle Ford Shale, a 400-mile-long oil field that arcs across South Texas in a crooked smile. They’ve hired attorneys and technical experts to help them fight the permit.

This fall they won a significant battle — but not the war — when the three-member Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees the oil and gas industry, voted to send the permit for the facility back to agency staff to make sure the site could accommodate runoff from larger storms.

The hearing Tuesday before an administrative law judge and a technical examiner focused on the increased requirement that the site be able to handle a 50-year flood instead of a 25-year flood, the usual standard for this type of facility.

Olga Kobzar, an attorney for San Antonio-based Pyote Reclamation Systems LLC, said the company has made safety improvements, including such changes as deepening stormwater ponds to hold more water.

“I asked them to design for the worst-case scenario,” said Grant Chambless, manager of the environmental permits section. “This was an additional safety measure.”

The community doesn’t like the very idea of such a facility at their doorstep. But they also have raised questions about whether a big rain would send water from the site into creeks and onto neighboring properties. The permit process and technical work on-site happened mostly during a record drought, and now it’s raining again.

Carrol Norrell, board member of the Goliad County Groundwater Conservation District, submitted an affidavit of protest from the nearby district. The proposed site is at the high point, called Pilot’s Nob, between two watersheds: the Manahuilla and Coleto creeks, which flow into Goliad County where they join the San Antonio and Guadalupe rivers.

Norrell said there’s more than geological evidence to consider. She has seen flooding on Manahuilla Creek break the dams.

“There is historical data showing what has happened in previous times with catastrophic events,” Norrell said.

Engineer Ed von Dran, a witness for Citizens Against Pollution, said the commission should consider what the additional rains would do to the soil that would be used to build dikes and dams to help keep the water on-site.

“I have to question the integrity of that dam,” von Dran said.

State Rep. Geanie Morrison, R-Victoria, sat in the back of the room to support residents who had made the trip to Austin. She was joined by DeWitt County Judge Daryl Fowler, who also opposes the site.

Environmental engineers for Pyote said the land is close to ideal for this sort of facility — it’s covered in a thick layer of clay, is not in an aquifer recharge area and has no wetlands. Under the terms of the permit, it would not be allowed to impact groundwater or surface water — all water would be contained on-site.

If it weren’t for the protests, the facility long ago would have sailed through an administrative approval process with the Railroad Commission staff because it met the agency’s technical requirements.

There was no action in Tuesday’s hearing. An administrative law judge may amend the original staff Proposal for Decision, which could go back to the three commissioners for final action.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality also would have to permit the site, though the company has said it would wait for Railroad Commission approval before starting that process.

The problem of waste in the Eagle Ford and where to put it has been a difficult one for communities, several of which have said they are worried that they will get a reputation as being a dumping ground. Drilling in the Eagle Ford generates a lot of water and solid waste that must go somewhere, but no one wants it to end up next to them.

Residents also are concerned about the potential for heavy traffic on Hohn Road, the narrow road that leads to the proposed waste pit, and about the effect on the school, the only one in Nordheim. But agency officials have said that those sorts of issues are not part of their purview.

jhiller@express-news.net