Oil from Colorado drilling sites contaminating soil

"Colorado's intensifying oil and gas boom is taking a toll on soil—200 gallons spilled per day seeping into once-fertile ground—that experts say could be ruinous," Bruce Finley reports for The Denver Post. "But with support from state regulators, oil companies increasingly are proposing to clean contaminated soil on site using mixing machinery and microbes. This may be cheaper for the industry—and could save and restore soil. But it is not proven."

"At least 716,982 gallons (45 percent) of the petroleum chemicals spilled during the past decade have stayed in the ground after initial cleanup—contaminating soil, sometimes spreading into groundwater, a Denver Post analysis found," Finley writes. "That's about one gallon of toxic liquid every eight minutes penetrating soil. In addition, drillers churn up 135 to 500 tons of dirt with every new well, some of it soaked with hydrocarbons and laced with potentially toxic minerals and salts. And heavy trucks crush soil, suffocating the delicate subsurface ecosystems that traditionally made Colorado's Front Range suitable for farming." (Post graphic)

Eugene Kelly, chief of soil and crop science at Colorado State University, said, "The overall impact of the oil and gas boom 'is like a death sentence for soil.'" Kelly told Finley, "We need to be very mindful of the way we're using soil. It could be the next limiting component when we talk about feeding the planet and having a sustainable lifestyle—because all the good stuff is gone and soil is being degraded. Some day the fossil fuels will be gone. Is our soil going to be healthy?"

The 578 reported spills in 2013 was the highest in 10 years and contaminated an estimated 173,400 tons of topsoil, Finley writes. Analysis shows that 45 percent of the spills stay in the soil, and 12.3 percent of the last 1,000 spills "already had contaminated groundwater before companies began cleanup." (Read more)