Marty Schladen

USA Today Network Austin Bureau

AUSTIN — Scores of photographs taken by state emergency-management officials show that when floodwaters rise in Texas, they inundate oil wells and fracking sites, sweeping crude and noxious chemicals into rivers throughout the Lone Star State.

Most recently, rainbow sheens and caramel plumes can be seen radiating from tipped tanks and flooded production pads during the March flood of the Sabine River, which forms much of the state’s boundary with Louisiana. Similar scenes are visible in photos from last year’s floods of the Trinity, Red, and Colorado rivers.

Photos: Floodwaters in Texas overwhelm oil wells, fracking sites

But despite apparent evidence that spills have been routine in recent floods, Texas' regulator, the Railroad Commission of Texas, contends that it has responded effectively.

“I’m confident that once the agency is notified, we’re taking appropriate measures,” Rich Parsons, the commission’s communications director, said last week.

Scientists and environmental groups aren’t as confident.

They worry that as floodwaters rage, harmful substances are swept downstream into the environment — and, possibly, drinking-water supplies — before Railroad Commission inspectors can reach the site of the spills.

“They’re looking after the fact at what might have happened,” said Ken Kramer, water resources chairman of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. “Because of that, it’s pretty hard to figure out exactly what happened.”

It’s hard to draw definite conclusions simply by looking at photographs, but after reviewing a few, one expert said the spills could be deadly.

“That’s a potential disaster,” said Walter Tsou, a physician and past president of the American Public Health Association. He published an article about the possible risks posed by fracking fluids on the website of the Environmental Health Policy Institute, an arm of the group Physicians for Social Responsibility.

“I’m sure it will get into the groundwater and streams and creeks,” Tsou said of photos depicting oil plumes and inundated wastewater ponds. “In other areas, cattle that drank the fracking fluid actually died an hour after drinking it. There are potential carcinogens that can lead to leukemia, brain cancer and other endocrine disruptors that can affect premature births. So it is not good to drink fracked wastewater.”

A series of photos were shot by the Texas Wing of the Civil Air Patrol when the Texas Department of Public Safety activated the State Operations Center during recent major flooding. The surveillance is directed by the Mid-American Geospatial Information Center at the University of Texas at Austin, which posts photos from recent floods on its website.

As emergency managers identify photographic evidence of flood-related spills, they notify the appropriate state agency, said DPS spokesman Tom Vinger.

“Based on the particular circumstances, agencies that could be notified in a scenario involving a potential spill include the Texas Railroad Commission, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality or the Texas General Land Office,” Vinger said in an email.

In the case of spills from inland oil-and-gas production sites, the Railroad Commission is the responsible agency, TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow said.

Once notified of a spill, the Railroad Commission reacts quickly, spokeswoman Ramona Nye said.

“If a release or spill is identified, the agency dispatches an inspector to investigate,” she said. “Alleged violations are documented and appropriate action is taken based on the nature of the alleged violation.”

Despite the many photos of apparent spills in the past three years, Nye did not provide any examples of enforcement actions taken against energy producers whose sites leaked during severe floods.

“It is possible alleged violations could be identified as a result of a severe weather event, but we track and enforce violations based on commission rules, not specific weather events,” Nye said.

In the case of one spill, Nye described her agency’s response.

The photograph was taken June 8 on the Lower Trinity River about six miles northeast of Midway, Texas. It shows a production site with 11 tall, tan tanks.

Floodwaters swamped the berm around the pad. Inside, most of the water is black, but as it is it carried away, it swirls in caramel plumes.

Photographs taken just downstream the same day show heavy, dark plumes flowing into and through flooded groves of trees.

A railroad commission inspection report dated July 16 — more than a month after the photos were taken — describes what was done in response to the spill.

Describing the well site itself, the report says, “Free oil picked up and berm was pressure washed. Soil inside firewall is being remediated.”

Referring to a downstream grove of trees, it says, “Remediation of tree-line area of pecan trees near well 700 is finished.”

The report doesn’t mention oil and chemicals that might have washed farther downstream. Nor does it say how much oil or other substances might have left the well site during the flooding.

Of the other photos the Railroad Commission reviewed, it said one — shot during last month’s flooding on the Sabine River — was of a leaking facility in Louisiana on the east side of the waterway. Another, showing a brown penumbra around a tank during last year’s Red River floods, contained no evidence of an oil spill, Nye said.

Despite its assurances, the commission has long been accused of being soft on the industry it’s supposed to regulate.

Lon Burnham is a former Democratic state representative from Fort Worth who unsuccessfully sought his party’s nomination to an open seat on the three-member commission earlier this year. He said that since the members of the Railroad Commission receive most of their campaign contributions from energy producers, they have little incentive to punish polluters — or even find that they’re polluting.

“They don’t enforce,” Burnham said. “They don’t fine. But they do whine about needing more money from the Legislature.”

Indeed, a 2015 report by the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice showed that each of the commissioners got more than half of their campaign funding from industry contributors, with Chairman David Porter getting the most — 67 percent.

Texans for Public Justice implied that the funding led the commission to sponsor research claiming that fracking can’t be shown to cause earthquakes even though scientists at Southern Methodist University reported that it does.

Despite the criticisms of the commission, spokeswoman Nye insisted that spill prevention is the agency’s top job.

“Protection of public safety and our natural resources is the Railroad Commission’s highest priority,” she said. “The Railroad Commission’s oil and gas rules have been effective in carrying out this mission. As stated previously, all operators are required to report any spills in water and contain and clean up such spills in compliance with Railroad Commission rules.”

An industry group also said that Texas production sites located within flood plains are safe.

“Oil and natural gas companies utilize the latest technologies to establish and maintain safe operations in any weather condition,” Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, said in an email. “The Railroad Commission of Texas provides direction and oversight in the unlikely event that an environmental cleanup project is necessary. Operators who do not comply with regulations or remediation directives should face enforcement and can lose their permit to operate in Texas.”

However, some experts aren’t convinced of the safety of the production sites — especially with the profusion in recent years of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” It’s a method in which a stew of chemicals is injected into the ground at high pressures to fracture shale rocks and release natural gas.

The fluid has some toxic substances when it’s injected. When it’s pumped out of the ground it can contain even more.

In a draft assessment released for scientific review last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said 134 chemicals have been found in the “produced water” that is pumped out of fracking wells.

“These include chemicals added during the chemical mixing stage, as well as naturally occurring organic chemicals and radionuclides, metals, and other constituents of subsurface rock formations mobilized by the hydraulic fracturing process,” the assessment said.

As of early last year, the report said, “there is a lack of published, peer-reviewed epidemiological or toxicological studies that have examined health effects resulting from water contamination due to hydraulic fracturing. However, numerous authors have noted that with the recent increase in hydraulic fracturing operations there may be an increasing potential for significant public health and environmental impacts via ground and surface water contamination.”

Many of the photos shot during Texas’ recent floods show swamped wastewater ponds at fracking sites, presumably allowing wastewater to escape into the environment — and potentially into drinking-water supplies.

Morgan Tingley is a University of Connecticut biologist who studies “global-change ecology.” He was at Princeton University in 2014 when he joined a group of scientists who published a report on the unknown environmental risks posed by fracking, the use of which was then expanding rapidly.

“The truth is, we don’t have a good handle,” he said in a recent interview. “We don’t know what’s stored on and around fracking pads.”

He added, however, that it’s safe to assume that some of the substances are very harmful to the environment, including heavy salts and naturally occurring radioactive compounds.

A review of a few photos of the Texas spills seemed to confirm the fears Tingley and his colleagues outlined in 2014, he said.

“Two of the most worrisome risks we identified seem to be apparent in these photos,” he said.

Nye was asked if, in light of the many photos of apparent flood-related spills, the Railroad Commission had proposed any new rules for producers to prevent them in the future.

“The commission is constantly reviewing our rules to ensure they provide adequate protection,” she said.

Kramer, the Sierra Club’s water-resources chairman, said that with intense storms predicted to occur more frequently, it’s critical to take preventive steps now.

“We just know they’re going to recur all the time,” he said.

Marty Schladen can be reached at 512-479-6606; mschladen@elpasotimes.com; @martyschladen on Twitter.

Inspection report

Draft Assessment

Railroad Commission Quake