As residents watched the lake levels recede and got only what they saw as resistance from their city council, they started wondering what else the drilling activity was doing to their community. They didn’t like what they found out.
One of the most visible problems with the drilling operation, beyond the shrinking of the lake, has been what critics call the “Third World” conditions of the site.
“It’s not a well site; it’s a natural gas factory,” Flowers said. “It looks like a 1950s gas refinery.”
Wastewater storage tanks, separators, pipes, and valves are all showing signs of rust, he said. In fact, one of the water storage tanks has a large rust hole visible on top.
“It’s potentially the most dangerous situation we have right now,” he said. “There are two more [wastewater storage tank] tops ready to collapse, and it appears to me that all the tanks may need replacing. I know rust very well, being a trailer manufacturer. We undercoat, use polyurethanes … . Salt water and toxic chemicals are tough on steel, and you would think the coatings would be better to prevent this kind of rusting out in just four years.”
The water tanks are used to store “frack water” that contains numerous known carcinogens.
Flowers and other members of PERG recently learned a likely reason for those problems: The city started inspecting the site only within the last month.
Tedder told Fort Worth Weekly in June that the first city inspection of the well sites had come a little more than a month earlier. Before that, he said, the only inspections had been done by XTO itself. However, according to city council minutes, the town hired inspector Larry Hulsey on a contract basis four years ago to do those inspections.
In May, while XTO was in the midst of its second round of drilling and fracking, Flowers said, he called Hulsey’s office. The inspector oversees gas industry activity for several cities.
“I spoke to his assistant,” said Flowers. “She said, ‘Well there is nothing going on out there, is there?’ And I said, ‘Well, yeah, they are fracking five wells as we speak.’ And she said, ‘I need to go talk to [the inspector].’ ”
Flowers realized the city had yet to inspect the wells. When he confronted a city staffer, he was given the runaround.
“We asked city hall for inspection reports, and [a city staffer] said she was busy and would have them for me soon,” he said. “I called the inspector … and his assistant wasn’t aware of activity at the pad site, said nobody told us they were drilling.
“We have a city administrator saying, ‘I will get you reports,’ but the inspector didn’t even know activity was taking place,” he said.
Flowers said he had talked to folks in other cities where Hulsey has worked and reported, “He is very well-respected in the industry.”
Flowers said he worries that the site is only a few dozen yards away from a Montessori elementary school and that the lack of inspection has allowed XTO to run roughshod over the city’s emissions requirements. On some days, he said, he can see a gaseous mist blowing right toward the school.
School officials did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
According to city records, Hulsey made his first inspection of the site on June 6, though an inspection report has not yet been released.
City officials, the mayor, and members of the city council would not answer questions as to why the inspector — who was hired four years ago — performed his first inspection in June. Hulsey could not be reached for comment.
The problems that critics of XTO are experiencing in Dalworthington Gardens sound familiar to Calvin Tillman. He was the mayor when drilling activity and its concomitant pollution essentially overran his small North Texas town of DISH. His own children developed recurrent nosebleeds, and other residents were found to have detectable levels of toluene and other chemicals in their systems. A 2010 study by Cook Children’s Health Care System revealed that 25 percent of DISH’s fourth-graders were suffering from asthma, compared to 7 percent statewide.
“Most [gas industry] sites at some point will have emissions that are dangerous,” Tillman said. “The industry brags about what good neighbors they are, and then they do nothing to capture their emissions. They just let it spew out into the air and onto our children.” He is one of the founders of ShaleTest, a nonprofit organization that collects environmental data and helps low-income families and communities test the emissions connected with shale oil and gas extraction.
Urban drilling “has failed,” he said. “It has shown without a doubt that it’s not a good idea near homes and schools.”
Lundsberg, the XTO spokeswoman, said the company is aware of dilapidated conditions and has a plan in place to repair and clean up the site.
“The Dalworthington Gardens pad site contains eight water tanks used for produced water storage,” she said in an e-mail. “During the recent frack jobs, these tanks were not in service. XTO is replacing the tanks and performing other maintenance coating work this summer. We apologize to the residents for the temporary appearance of our equipment as we work to complete our equipment maintenance and upgrades. We estimate the equipment will be replaced or fixed by mid-September.”
She did not respond to questions about whether XTO is monitoring emissions of volatile organic compounds (called VOCs and known as carcinogens) at the site or to a request for monitoring data.
Flowers said nearby residents are also worried about noise levels coming from the well site. Often at night, a “very loud screeching wak[es] up my neighbors. People are terrified they are going to go through this all over again with the upcoming round of wells.”
One night, he said, the screeching sound was so loud, he told his son to get in his truck and drive as far away from the city as he could.
The town ordinance sets maximum allowable sound levels at 85 decibels, measured 300 feet from the source, but Flowers said the meter is in the wrong place and facing the wrong way to accurately capture noise levels.
“The sound meter was on the opposite side of the site from the neighborhood in between the entrance to the site and the school,” he said. “And it was stuffed into a clump of trees. Now what good is it to mount the decibel reader over 400 feet from the fracking, pointed in the wrong direction behind a clump of trees?”
At the June meeting, Marion Armstrong, who identified herself as a sound engineer, told the city council and the audience that she had installed a sound meter in her yard and reported that noise levels routinely exceeded the drilling ordinance’s allowable maximum level –– at times nearly doubling it.
One night last month, residents who live around the lake noticed a dust cloud rising out of XTO’s pad site and rolling into the neighborhood. Some worried about what it might be; others didn’t seem to notice or care — like a fisherman who became enveloped in it.
“I came home to find the area between my house and the well site engulfed in a sort of cloud,” said Armstrong. “The impact was significant. The cloud hung the full distance between the well site and my front yard. It was palpable. The fisherman was almost invisible during my drive in. Personally, I’m concerned for that individual.”
“You got an instant headache,” said Flowers, calling the chemical-laden cloud, “the strangest air I’ve ever breathed. You knew immediately to get back inside.”
The cloud was frack sand, which is added to the water solution used to fracture the shale formations holding gas. The danger Flowers was referring to is the high levels of crystalline silica the sand contains.
“Evidently loads of frack sand were being delivered and off-loaded quickly with total disregard for airborne silica,” he said.
Sharon Wilson, representative of the Texas Oil and Gas Accountability Project, said the symptoms that Flowers and Armstrong described sound like something other than silica exposure, because the symptoms of silica exposure would take longer to manifest.
“It sounds like chemical exposure to me,” she said. “They will mix the sand with chemicals and water, and sometimes the sand is coated with chemicals, and that is what it could be — a chemical exposure from the resin.
A Department of Labor study describes the effects of repeated exposure to silica. Workers who breathe silica day after day often develop silicosis, a disease in which lung tissue becomes inflamed and scarred, reducing the lungs’ ability to take in oxygen.
“This is serious stuff and should not be taken lightly,” Flowers said. “We weren’t prepared like the workers are who have the proper protection.”
Several residents, including Flowers and Armstrong, reported getting instant headaches that evening and waking up with congestion and red, watery eyes from the exposure.
Lundsberg, in a statement, said XTO had been notified about the dust cloud.
“XTO investigated the situation and found all operations were conducted in accordance with regulations,” Lundsberg said. “As standard operating procedure, XTO requires its contractors to unload sand at a low pressure and use a filter sock to minimize dust during loading.”
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XTO has now fracked 11 wells from a site that, according to several neighbors and a TCEQ official, is sitting on top of a small earthen dam. However, even information as basic as when the dam was built is in question.
“Somebody knew this was a dam when they installed the pad site,” Flowers said. “Why else would you concrete about half the west embankment? It looks like a very weak attempt at ‘armoring.’ ” He also believes that puddles indicate that the dam is beginning to leak.
Noonan said she initially didn’t know the dam existed. She found out about it, she said, when she and others contacted TCEQ with complaints about a waterfall that the city had added to park landscaping that she believed might be holding back water that needed to go into the lake to replenish it.
“When [TCEQ] came out, they felt like it was a dam,” she said. “That’s when they began a second investigation into the integrity of the pad site. The inspector told me, ‘Had we known it was a dam, this pad site would have never been allowed to be here.’ ”
In an e-mail obtained by the Weekly, a TCEQ representative confirms to Dalworthington Garden citizens and Tedder that there is indeed a Pappy Elkins Dam. However, the dam wasn’t in the state inventory of dams prior to TCEQ’s inspection in June. As a result, the e-mail said, the TCEQ Dam Safety Program has no file on record with information on the dam’s history or construction.
TCEQ is investigating the neighbors’ complaints, but the results have not been made public. A TCEQ spokeswoman said the investigation is ongoing, and she expects the results to be released by the end of the month.
The e-mail also said that TCEQ “will take specific note of the seep and make recommendations for routine monitoring of the flow and content of the seep.”
Gas and oil drilling can have many impacts on dams and other structures, said Rhonda Paige, spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers. The safety risks include well blowouts, drilling impacts, and the potential for sinking or shifting of the land.
One Dalworthington Gardens resident told the Weekly he believes the dam TCEQ is referring to is not directly underneath the pad site and that it is not leaking and has not been damaged by drilling activity.
Larry Galbiati, a geologist, said he has explored the area since 1968, has gone back through many historical photographs, and believes that not only is the pad site not on a dam but that Pappy Elkins Lake is not “leaking.”
Galbiati said the well site actually sits on the same Woodbine sandstone formation that underlies the whole neighborhood. He said he shared that information with a TCEQ official.
“In the ’60s, the site was a quarry, and they sold surface sand,” he said. “They were digging down to scrape the sand off the surface to sell, and it created the impoundment, which did hold water. If you dig down far enough, you are going to leave some kind of wall on the side. The quarry eventually hit a natural spring, and the holes filled up with water, and eventually a lake formed. The pad was built on the original [natural] sandstone wall.”
What he does worry about, Galbiati said, is the road XTO built through a nearby drainage channel.
“That road now blocks the drainage,” he said. “You have built a structure through a floodplain with culverts in it, and now it [functions as] a dam. Now we have to determine whether that bridge with five culverts can withstand a 100-year flood event. The TCEQ agrees it’s the road, not the pad site” that poses a flooding problem.
What some residents believe are leaks, he said, are actually the upwelling of the same springs that originally formed the lake.
“TCEQ might have a problem with some of the things XTO has done, but I don’t,” he said. “I hate that well being back there as much as anyone. I fought the pad site from being built. I’ve heard the noise, all of it, but in honesty I cannot say they [XTO] have done anything wrong.”
Flowers said he believes the road and the earthen embankment are so close together, they are one and the same and that TCEQ is calling the area a dam.
“It’s difficult to get accurate history on this thing, “ Flowers said. “I don’t think anyone knows for sure what the quarry was doing and how the lake was formed. I know one thing for sure: TCEQ is calling it a dam.”
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Earlier this month, XTO began a new round of fracking in Dalworthington Gardens. Tensions are still high between some residents, city officials, and the drillers. Once-staid city council meetings have turned into the stuff of daytime talk shows, with yelling matches, name-calling, and profanity.
Many fear the lack of oversight of the wells will result in health issues like those in DISH. At a recent city council meeting, one resident demanded more information on emissions. Later in the meeting, Councilman Ed Motley confronted an XTO representative, who promised to clean up the site.
Flowers said he is leery of any company that has violated city ordinances and state law and tried to cover up those violations. He’s unsure if he can trust a mayor who tried to extend XTO’s permit without TCEQ’s permission or a vote of the city council. He’s not confident about a city council that, as he sees it, went back on its word when it allowed gas drillers to use water from the lake.
Noonan and others say XTO has violated numerous parts of the city drilling ordinance, illegally taken water, and potentially put residents in danger.
Company officials “looked us in the face and lied to us,” she said.
Flowers said that the drilling was sold to residents as a windfall. But he now believes it’s costing him money in property value. “I’ve stated before that for every $1 I receive from XTO, they’ve cost me $5 in property value,”
The attitude of the town’s government, Noonan said, has escalated the controversy.
“We did go to the mayor,” she said. “I went to City Councilman [Guy] Snodgrass before we addressed the council, and the answers didn’t add up. So it wasn’t like all of a sudden we got this angry group together. When we did go to the council with some hard questions, we were met with a very sarcastic attitude.”
For Flowers, it comes down to what could be lost.
“We had a beautiful lake and park here with an abundance of wildlife and so many birds,” he said. “We just want that back.”
Sorry, no sale! The Pappy Elkins “lake” was never more than a 2-3 acre pond. In years past, it has been overrun with algae and pond scum, requiring regular remediation-dredging at tax payer expense ( many years before ANY drilling/fracking activities were initiated).. This was due to the close in neighborhood lawn maintenance and gardening nitrogen rich fertilization activities of the residents of DWG combined with post storm/flooding runoff pollution. Wild life? That’s also fairly overblown. There have been a number of varieties of urbanized ducks seen in any local park, squirrels and backyard birds, and really not much else. Fishing? For years there was a” no fishing” sign on the western side of the “lake” out of public health and safety concerns.because the “lake” was basically polluted. The DWG water supply has always been a bit suspicious with high iron basically turning outside house edifaces orange post regular lawn and garden watering.
You are incorrect Marcie. The lake was larger than what you say. We did have a foreign plant many years ago that needed to be extricated and to my knowledge the lake has never been dredged. I have lived on the lake 20 years and have NEVER SEEN pond scum. Also, the wildlife we had included blue heron, white heron, many varieties of turtles, many varieties of duck and geese, fox, beaver, hawks, split tails, bass (large and small), catfish, lake perch, just to name a few. The high iron content you talk about is in private wells not in the spring of the lake. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Marcie. We see great beauty in Pappy Elkins and our city. It’s definitely more beautiful than a rusted out pad site with sound barriers. I find the sounds of birds and ducks more beautiful than the clanking of trucks and pipes and alarms going off.
Marcie, Wondering if you are in fact a DWG citizen. Out of all the statements you made, I can agree with only one. Pappy Elkins was in fact a very small lake. However, most of everything else you said is simply not factual. I have been a citizen for 22 years and have watched our Pappy rise a few feet and fall a few feet on a regular basis due to weather related issues. The wildlife has always been abundant. So abundant, in fact, that those of us within a few blocks had excess ducks swimming in our pool, possums, raccoons and even armadillos running everywhere. They are gone. I won’t even discuss fishing…too sad, one of our citizens (now passed) put much money and effort into stocking the lake with fish approximately five years prior to the arrival of the drill site. It was his personal mission to have the children of DWG enjoy fishing. The fish were not able to survive the destruction of our Pappy! As Cyndi confirmed, we did have one foreign plant incident which gratefully our city dealt with, other than that, no major issues. Please understand, Marcie, this campaign is not about ending the XTO/DWG relationship, it’s about doing things the safe and correct way
Ms. Noonan is correct about the size of the Lake and the foreign plant that was introduced; non-native water hyacinth. Native lake vegetation, needed for a healthy lake and healthy fish population, never recovered like before the chemicals were used to wipe out the foreign invader chocking the lake. For this reason, some have referred to Pappy Elkins as a “dead lake”, but yes, there are still fish there. Regarding my quotes in this FW Weekly article: I cannot, and do not speak for the TCEQ, nor can I speak for the City of DWG. I am just an interested citizen in the DWG community; I live about 600 feet from the well site. My statement regarding the road and culverts blocking the drainage, and functioning as dam WAS QUESTION, NOT A STATEMENT!! The road and culverts only becomes a dam, or blockage to flow, if the culverts become clogged by a 100 year flood. The original surface of Lake Pappy Elkins covered 8 to 10 acres. The on-going drought in Texas, has over the past few years has evaporated the lake down to 4.9 acres, which is the size it was at the time this story was written for the FW Weekly. I measured the rain and runoff in DWG from June 22 to June 25, 2014: the lake’s surface area increased to 5.9 acres, and raised the lake 6.25 inches. That amounts to 2.4 acre-feet of rainwater and rain runoff, or about 924,000 gallons. In comparison, that’s half the amount of water XTO needed to frac their 5 new wells. (The DWG city website states XTO’s frac tank on the city’s ball park held 43,000 barrels, or about 1.8 million gallons.) It should be noted that although Lake Pappy Elkins is very low and shallow, it can only fill up about two additional feet! More rain and runoff than that and all excess water will flows down the Trinity River and on to the Gulf of Mexico. Our small lake can never get back to the level the people in our community want unless repair work is approved and done. The springs I mentioned in your article, DID NOT FORM THE LAKE, but the old quarrying would have stopped when their diggings filled with water. Springs were known to be present in the area before the quarrying began. Before DWG City Hall was built, there was actually an artesian well on the location. I don’t know the real answer as to what stopped the quarrying, but I can only guess. Perhaps ask the engineers who tried to lower Cooper Street separating UTA campus, just a few miles from here, and a few years ago. Original plan was to lower Cooper Street so cars could go under a planned, unobstructed campus walk way for the students.. excavation of Cooper Street had to stop due to hitting a ground water flow, they could go no deeper. A crossover bridge had to be built upward instead. Just food for thought.
I have indeed lived in DWG, though no longer. You folks have a bad habit of electing “mayors for life” and then you are surprised at the cronyism and other toxic effects of virtual dictatorship. Pappy Elkins was a fairly respectable little pond in past years–not really a” lake” by anyone’s definition. The ducks and local birds are still a lot of fun. I am pleased that Larry G is honest enough to admit that chemical treatment of the lake for the water hyacinth dealt it a considerable environmental blow
(which was many years ago as I recall–possibly a decade ago),from which it never really recovered. I live in the area currently and as far as we are concerned, there is never a shortage of possums, raccoons, armadillos,cottontails, skunks etc. Just start a vegetable garden or compost pit and find out. I understand your distress but over-exaggeration does not help the situation, and indeed makes you all look a little silly. Get some term limits going on your local elected officials if they treat you and your concerns unfairly and dismissively.
Isn’t this a man made lake rather than a naturally occurring body of water? And- as such -isn’t it particularly subject to the natural vicissitudes of neighborhood environmental pollution? DWG is a lovely community and has more to offer than Southlake or Grapevine, for example, IMO,but Marcie H. is correct. You folks have to get your act together and stop blaming the convenient “whipping boy” of the fracking /energy corporations. Take this concern locally and see what you can accomplish rather than depending upon dubious external state or natl. govt “services”… YOU CAN DO IT!
Snappy Pappy
Let’s lighten it up. That’s an Alligator Snapper Turtle I am holding that I caught and released back into Pappy 2008. In 2004 I observed one on the west roadway at least 5 times bigger; nobody believed me till I caught this one. Ft Worth zoo confirmed this is rare for them to be in our area and they are a threatened species. I have faith old legendary Snappy Pappy is still alive (they can live up to 125). He just needs more water!
Have you actually been to Pappy Elkins? We have lived in DWG for several years and I have photos of my kids playing at the lake with a wide variety of wildlife in background. If runoff from lawn care was the culprit then the lake would have had problems well before the well went in.
My children have attended The Montessori Academy just north of the lake since before the well started. We were apprehensive about the well going in so close to the school but unfortunately there wasn’t much that the parents could do about it. The noise and dust at the school from the well and the trucks going back and forth to the well at the school is horribly disruptive.
As a long-time resident I am appalled at the horrible job our elected officials have done at protecting our town. Since the wells went in I have voted against them because of this but it hasn’t done any good.
Much of the discussion in the commentary is regarding the invasive plant species-water hyacinth which required a lengthy toxic chemical eradication treatment many years ago –possibly a decade— from which the lake “never fully recovered” leaving some to designate it a “dead lake”. This was many years before the fracking industry wells were allowed in DWG. Please read the comment by Larry Galbiati who is cited in the article and corrects the author on a few points, The points some commenters/bloggers (who have lived in DWG-BTW) are making here is that the lake (in reality a pond) was fragile( and damaged?) before due to opportunistic vegetation and pollution poisoning.
We agree that it was irresponsible for the city elected officials to disregard the environment, and allow drilling to proceed, but blaming everything on the drilling companies is too simplistic.
I am 53 years old and have been coming to Pappy Elkins since I was 8. I caught my first fish in that lake. It has been reduced to nothing more than a mudhole. If you read the article and the research with an open mind and no agenda you will see that this has happened on our Mayors watch and with his approval. The lake and park have always been a tranquil peaceful getaway in a city being overrun with concrete and people. I believe in what this group of DWG citizens stand for and I support them.
Well…I guess you can stop arguing about if there are any fish in Pappy Elkins. You can go out there and count them as they float to the top of the water. There’s a major fish kill happening there now. Don’t worry about the birds. They’re all gone except the buzzards. Hopefully Snappy Pappy, the foxes, coons, armadillos and other wildlife escaped while they could. And to anyone that wants to dispute that XTO Energy and their fracking operation didn’t do this, do your research. They have admitted draining the lake for fracking with the City’s blessing. Ft Worth Weekly…..please do a follow up story to this one. Things have gone from bad to worse. Don’t except a statement from the City or Mayor. They’re hiding behind closed doors.
That’s the spirit! Continue to argue amongst yourselves over what a ‘lake’ is, the size, condition and whether or not it’s man made and ever had an algae problem. Let’s completely ignore the bad acts on the part of XTO as well as the mayor. (News flash: Anyone who actually uses the phrase ‘Good Neighbor’ and ‘responsible stewards’ when referring to Industry either works for Industry, is their spokesperson, or benefiting financially)
Who cares if XTO or the mayor did anything inappropriate or illegal or why the discrepancy of millions of gallons of water?