My family and I live in Clark,
Wyo., on the Montana-Wyoming border, and though I used to tell
people that I live on the edge of Yellowstone country, I now admit
that I’m in an industrial zone, where things can get dangerous and
go very wrong.
Early in the evening of Aug. 11, a
neighbor called to say that our area of some 35 households had been
ordered to evacuate because of a “blowout” at the Crosby gas well
just up the road. A drill rig had punctured a high-pressure chamber
some 8,500 feet down the hole, and the well casing had failed under
the strain. Short of an explosion or fire, a blowout is the most
serious accident one of these wells can experience.
We
later learned that the incident had occurred much earlier, at 2
p.m., when rig workers spotted drilling fluids and methane gas
erupting up and down the county road, with some of the blowholes
150 feet away from the rig.
We also learned that
officials of Windsor of Wyoming LLC and its contract crews spent
three hours trying to deal with the problem before calling in
people from volunteer emergency services, and they used up another
hour trying to “evaluate” the situation. Meanwhile, none of us knew
this had been going on.
That afternoon, I’d had a
scratchy throat, watery eyes and a runny nose, but that was nothing
new. I assumed that my feeling sick was caused by the dust and
diesel fumes that had become part of life. But right after my
neighbor called, I noticed that the air seemed thick enough to
taste. My neighbor and I debated loading up our horses before
deciding just to get dogs and people into pickups and blast out of
there — as fast as we could.
For the next three
days, while we camped out with friends or in motels 40 miles away,
8 million cubic feet of methane and vaporized drilling fluids were
released into the atmosphere as the company tried to “kill” the
well.
My neighbors and my family were kept in the dark
about what was taking place at the well site. Nor could the company
representatives, elected and appointed state officials, county
disaster and emergency workers tell us what to expect in the
aftermath of what was now called the Windsor blowout. They just
kept repeating that a blowout of this magnitude was a 0;one in a
million1; occurrence.
What we found most infuriating is
that for eight years — during which time Windsor was
responsible for three toxic spills and fined for illegal dumping of
drilling fluids — we had tried to get our small community to
prepare for a disaster like this. Again and again, my neighbors and
I asked how a 12-member volunteer first-response team could handle
industrial accidents, how our neighborhood could be evacuated
safely on a narrow, one-way gravel road, and how medical aid could
get to us from 40 miles away.
We reached out to Wyoming
Gov. Dave Freudenthal and his appointees at the Department of
Environmental Quality, the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and
the State Lands Board. We talked to elected officials, from the
conservation district to state legislators to Wyoming’s small
congressional delegation. We worked with local first responders,
and we attempted to open a dialogue with Industry representatives.
Again and again, we were told that we were
obstructionists and alarmists, unpatriotic and unrealistic —
or annoying nuts. Well, call us crazy, but as the Windsor blowout
demonstrated, accidents happen — serious, dangerous
accidents. That is why we need to be prepared. We need to take a
hard look at oil and gas operations throughout Wyoming and
throughout the West, scrutinizing environmental and safety records
of operators, keeping inventories of toxic chemicals, and demanding
realistic evacuation plans.
We were lucky no one was hurt
here in Clark, Wyo., but what have we learned? The week after the
blowout, Windsor got an Oil and Gas Commission permit to conduct
seismic exploration — using shallow blast charges to chart
underground gas pockets — on the same property where the
accident occurred. A week after that, the company got the go-ahead
to resume drilling on the site of the blowout.
Most of us
are back in our homes now, but we don’t feel safe or comfortable.
Some of us are suffering rashes, respiratory ailments, headaches,
insomnia and other symptoms of stress. And many of us are ready to
run.
Deb Thomas is a contributor to Writers on
the Range, a service of High Country News in
Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). She lives in Clark, Wyoming, and works
as an organizer for the Powder River Basin Resource
Council.
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