Garvin County residents are raising concerns about a proposed commercial recycling facility in the Pernell area that they say will decrease property values and potentially damage the quality of life on their rural properties.
The facility would take in and process waste materials from oil drilling operations, recycling it into road base materials and compost, according to an application filed with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission in December seeking administrative authorization for its construction and operation.
The proposed site for the facility is on East County Road 1690, between State Highways 74 and 76, just south of Foster and northeast of Pernell.
For the occupants of an estimated 15 homes within a mile of the site, some of whom live on property that has been in their families for generations, the construction of such a facility is largely unwelcome.
“They are going to be recycling ‘deleterious’ material, that’s anything harmful or damaging by definition. It’s mainly oil field waste. There’s a lot of toxins and carcinogens and things in that oilfield waste, if you start researching that,” said resident Sherry Kennedy, who lives just west of the proposed site. “I’m a landowner right next to it. I have a lot of concerns with the value of my property. I have a lot of concerns with the quality of the air, with the water. We have a lot of deer, a lot of wildlife. What is this going to do to them?”
As part of the oil and gas industry, commercial recycling facilities for oil field waste, like the one proposed near Pernell, are regulated by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. OCC rules for a recycling facility state that waste and deleterious substances must go through at least one treatment process and be recycled into a marketable product for resale or have some beneficial use.
Doug Presgrove, with Heartland Environmental Resources, LLC, and Heartland Homestead, LLC, the two companies listed on the application for the proposed Garvin County facility, said he uses a patented process to recycle oil and water-based drill cuttings, solids, drill mud and contaminated soils. He said while the process does result in solids that can be used as road base material which he makes available on a local basis to county commissioners if requested, his primary product is soil compost material used in agriculture.
“We are primarily a composting facility that creates a good agriculture product for sandy and loamy soils,” Presgrove said. “We utilize it on our own properties, and then we also work with landowners that are close to us.”
Heartland already owns similar facilities in Blaine County, near Watonga, and in Caddo County.
Presgrove said recycling oil field waste seems like a better alternative than burying them in a reserve pit or dumping them in a landfill.
“That doesn’t make very much sense to me environmentally or agriculturally,” said Presgrove. “I have an agriculture degree from Oklahoma State University. So, that’s important to me. It’s just a lot better process to turn that waste stream and those contaminated soils back into a useable product, and a useable agriculture product that truly has a good economic benefit.”
Regardless of the final product, area residents have a lengthy list of concerns regarding what the process and the raw materials will mean for their properties and their day-to-day life.
“We have a private water well that we do not want to be contaminated. We are concerned that this facility will contaminate our drinking water from a water well that is directly across the road,” resident Patsy Pyle wrote in a letter of protest already on file with the Corporation Commission. “We are concerned for the drinking water quality to remain living on this land, the ability to raise livestock, the ability to maintain natural resources, the ability for our grandchildren to live on the land we have owned for 100 years.”
In speaking with the News Star this week, Presgrove did not address concerns about odor or air quality directly. He did say measures are being taken, according to OCC rules, to monitor for groundwater contamination.
“We’ve done all of our geology work. We utilize a geologist. We’ve installed monitoring wells and everything just to monitor groundwater quality, everything that is in the OCC guidelines and regulations,” Presgrove said. “We have followed every rule exactly.”
Sherry Kennedy said she has been told the recycling facility will serve drilling operations within a 100-mile radius and average 15 truckloads of raw materials per day. But she points out there is nothing on the application to OCC that limits the number of trucks or the area from which drilling waste can be pulled, opening up the potential for oil field waste from further away to be shipped to Garvin County.
She and other residents are also concerned about the impact heavy truck traffic will have on their county roads – especially trucks containing drilling mud that can weigh three times what water does.
County Commissioner Gary Ayres, whose District 2 includes the proposed site, said the six-mile stretch of county road that runs past the property between Highway 74 and 76 includes seven bridges.
The newest was built in 2006 and the rest are Works Progress Administration-era bridges built in 1938 and 1947, according to Ayres. The 2006 bridge has a 53-ton weight limit, while the others have 22-ton limits. He estimates it would cost $150,000 a mile to rebuild the stretch of road from the ground up.
Presgrove said waste materials coming into the Pernell facility would likely come primarily from the surrounding counties, and the roads in that area already see a high volume of oil field traffic.
“If there’s 15 trucks coming into our facility a day, that means the oil and gas business is pretty busy,” Presgrove said. “So, there’s already a lot of oil and gas traffic on the road, no matter what, whether our facility is there or not.”
In another protest letter, area property owner Scott Wingo questioned the need for a commercial recycling facility in the Pernell area when another already exists just 15 miles away in neighboring Stephens County.
“There’s several of these facilities that are permitted around the state of Oklahoma,” Presgrove said.
The need for commercial recycling facilities can fluctuate and usually depends on how active oil field production is in a certain area, according to Presgrove, who added it becomes economically unfeasible to maintain the recycling facilities when drilling leaves an area.
“It’s a viable business as long as the oil and gas industry is pretty active in that area,” Presgrove said. “They need these facilities. There’s lots of oil and gas activity in our area, and this is a facility that is extremely valuable to the oil and gas industry.”
During a community meeting about the proposed facility last week, Garvin County resident Deborah Wood said she and her husband, Gene, sold the property now being considered for the recycling facility to Presgrove. She said when he approached them about buying the property, he said he intended to use it for his Hereford cattle headquarters.
When asked this week if that was a misrepresentation, Presgrove said, “I have a Hereford operation on it. I have 150 head of registered Hereford cows and calves there. So, we have a huge investment in our Hereford operation there. We certainly wouldn’t jeopardize that.”
“I know my process is available, and it’s a patented process and we followed all the rules and regulations and all – everything that was required of us – to be able to build and construct and operate our facility.”
For her part, Sherry Kennedy said she has learned how important it is to be informed. She has gotten a crash course in commercial recycling facilities for the oil and gas industry, as well as the permitting and protest processes at the Corporation Commission, in recent weeks. Now she and her neighbors are trying to get the word out.
“I’ve called a handful of people that live right around me, but I haven’t had time to call everybody that I know would be concerned,” Kennedy said. “It’s going to take everybody. It’s going to take a community.”
Residents have been advised their best recourse at this point is to file letters of protest with the Corporation Commission detailing their concerns, Kennedy said.
She and her neighbors have already begun the process of filing those letters. They have also met with State Rep. Tammy Townley, and Kennedy met with the Garvin County Board of Commissioners during the board’s regular meeting Jan. 23 to ask for their support.
Staff with the Corporation Commission’s Pollution Abatement Department will be making an initial site inspection for the proposed recycling facility at the property on East County Road 1690 Monday, Feb. 6, at 11 a.m. The public may attend the inspection and interested parties will have the opportunity to be heard.