Groundwater Woes - Drawn Away?

Oil & Natural Gas / Gas Shales / Related Environmental Issues / Hydrogeology & Water Resources

Christian McPhate reports that some fear oil and gas drillers could be tapping out vital aquifers of Texas. This story is part of a continuing series on water issues produced by the University of North Texas journalism graduate students and faculty in collaboration with the Denton Record-Chronicle. Since the drought struck the region in 2009, the pasture surrounding the well has been reduced to scorched earth. Terry Fender has spent the last two years checking on wells, driving the back roads of north-central Texas, crossing cattle guards and passing hundred-year-old windmills that still furnish ranchers, farmers and homeowners with water from the Trinity Aquifer flowing under the brittle surface of their land.

But now Fender and many others who depend on the Trinity Aquifer, their only source of water, fear the aquifer might be in mortal danger. McPhate claims that since 2005, oil and gas drilling in Denton, Wise and Montague counties has sucked billions of gallons of water from the Trinity Aquifer. The energy companies contend there is no proof that their drilling activities are responsible for depleting the aquifer. It could be drought. Or it could be that some residents are experiencing low water levels because their wells are poorly designed or poorly maintained and need to have their pumping levels lowered to match the lower water levels likely caused by the lack of recharge to the aquifers and associated drought on the surface.

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