CHEYENNE - “No one is going to like this bill,” predicted Senator Grant Larson, R-Jackson, chairman of the Senate Minerals, Business and Economic Committee, and speaking of Senate File 46, designed to manage coal-bed methane water runoff.
  

   Larson was probably right.
  

   In late Monday afternoon committee action, the five senators (Larson, Bebout, Vasey, Cooper, Fecht) stripped out language that had triggered the opposition of conservation and landowner groups. Yet the senate committee also approved language reinforcing the property rights of landowners who want to make beneficial use of CBM water – to the satisfaction of the energy industry.

   “We’ve debated this issue for three years,” said Larson. His committee opted to approve what they regarded as a flawed bill – all the better to get it to the Senate floor where amendments could make it better, or worse, depending on one’s point of view.

Crux of problem

   Everyone wants natural water, but residents are deeply divided on whether CBM water is useful or ruinous. CBM water is pumped away from the famous coal beds of the Powder River Basin, releasing methane gas that can then be captured by drillers. According to soil scientists, the complex chemical interactions between CBM water and soils can change dramatically within a drainage, whereby one landower realizes beneficial use of CBM water and his downstream neighbor can be ruined.

 

   Although Senate File 46, the “Discharged Water Management” bill was intended to deal with the harmful impact of salt-laden CBM waters flooding and ruining Powder River Basin pastures, it falls far short of that goal according to critics, prompting one opponent to call the unmet problems with the bill as “the elephant in the room, that no one wants to talk about.”

   The Wyoming Senate Minerals Committee wrestled with that reality Monday afternoon as members heard from state officials, conservationists, a landowner organization and energy industry lobbyists.

 

   The bill was sponsored by the Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Interim Committee, and was influenced by a CBM Task Force meeting that took place more than a year ago. While energy representatives spoke in favor of the bill, others were more critical, including State Engineer Patrick Tyrrell and Landowners Association of Wyoming President Lori Goodman.

Energy support

 

   John Robitaille, vice-president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, spoke briefly in favor of the bill.

   “This concept grew out of the task force. It is a good concept and we support it,” he said, referring to the basic idea of the bill – that if CBM waters overflow the natural banks of local waterways, then the carrying capacity of the stream will be determined by the State Engineer’s office and excess water will be cut back by curtailing CBM water or by augmenting the carrying capacity with excavation of ditches.

 

   Robitaille insisted that many landowners want to make use of CBM water. “This bill ensures the further and beneficial use of CBM water,” he added.

   Keith Burron, a Cheyenne-based attorney for Petro Canada USA, said the bill represents a workable “balance of interests between landowners and industry.” He warned of he futility of trying to legislate away “the philosophical differences” between industry and landowners who absolutely refuse to have anything to do with CBM waters.

 

   There were many more opponents than supporters of SF 46, in part or in whole, than there were supporters at the bill work session

   State Engineer Tyrrell, after giving a brief overview of the bill, asked the senators to remove a key paragraph -- one favored by the energy industry.

 

   The problem paragraph, according to Tyrrell, stated: “Notwithstanding any other provision in this section, if a landowner stores such produced water discharges in reservoirs, makes beneficial use of such produced water, or otherwise consents to the flow of produced water discharges that exceed the natural capacity of the channel on land which he owns or controls, such produced water discharges shall not be unlawful.”

   Goodman said SF 46 was not the bill to deal with CBM water management problems in the coal-bed methane fields of the Powder River Basin.

 

   The key failure of the bill, she said, was that it didn’t deal with the fact that CBM water problems are a mix of water quality and water quantity issues that must be dealt with together, not separately.

   “This is the elephant in the room that no one will talk about,” she said.

 

   CBM water problems have never been with “landowners who want CBM water and put it to good use,” said Goodman. Instead, the chronic problem in CBM country has always been the landowners who have problems with the quality of salt-laden CBM water, aggravated by the quantity of water, leading to flooding and erosion problems, she said.

   Goodman warned that the bill’s provision to dig ditches as a way to dispose of CBM water, was simply a way to avoid piping it away. Ironically, said Goodman, energy companies are starting to pipe CBM water past pastures and away from streams, avoiding the problems of salt-killed pastures or mixing natural flow with CBM flow and thereby eliminating the benefits of all the water.

 

   Passage of SF 46 as it stands now, said Goodman, would create disincentives for piping. She acknowledged that piping costs more than ditching, but it also does a better job of getting CBM water off a landowner’s land, with no risk of spills, flooding or mixing with the good water.

   “The big problem,” said Goodman, “is that Wyoming is not holding oil and gas to the same controls as we did with coal in 1976, where they were forced to sit down and work things out with landowners.” Pointedly, Goodman noted that not one mine expansion has ever been frustrated by a recalcitrant landowner.
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