May 25, 2008 - 4:17PM
By R. SCOTT RAPPOLD
THE GAZETTE
WALSENBURG - Kent Smith hasn't drawn a drop of water from his well in a year.

But the well has produced plenty of methane, an explosive and poisonous gas that, at one point, blasted from his well head with the roar of a car engine.

"When you have water taken away, it changes everything," said Smith, 64, a retired teacher who moved here from Castle Rock to be a self-described "cowboy" and keep horses amid the splendor of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.

On the plus side, the methane alarms installed in the past year in and outside of his house - a red light warns him not to go inside - haven't gone off.

Smith and other residents blame Petroglyph Energy, an Idaho-based company that has been pumping methane from the ground for a decade. Formed in coal beds, methane gas is used in heat and electricity generation.

For nearly a year, water wells have been going dry or bringing up methane-laced water - or just methane gas. One pump house has exploded, and residents worry about the explosive gas building in their basements or crawl spaces.

Methane has also seeped into home basements and yards, killing vegetation and raising fears of explosions.

An energy boom is on in Colorado, and while drilling for uranium, oil, gas and minerals has become widespread, few places have experienced such direct side effects as with methane in the hills southwest of Walsenburg.

Methane may be odorless and colorless, but many in Walsenburg say it stinks.

An explosive issue

It began when Benjamin Bounds' pump house exploded.

On June 1, enough methane seeped from his water well into the small building to blow the roof up against the nails, according to neighbor accounts and state officials.

Bounds declined to be interviewed, citing the possibility of a lawsuit over the methane.

Wells began running dry and others spouted methane, and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission investigated.

Petroglyph has 56 wells near Walsenburg, which the company shut down last summer after problems began. It is under orders of the commission not to restart the wells.

The company has tested 76 water wells as a result of the methane, and currently monitors 65. At last count, 25 had methane in them. Fourteen homes have had methane detectors installed and 11 residents - including Smith - have water delivered by truck.

Most of the impacts have been in River Ridge Ranch, southwest of Walsenburg, which was subdivided and sold in recent years, mostly for retirement homes. Nine homes are there now, with many more planned.

"The methane gets in the crawl space of your home and that builds up and builds up," said resident Richard Goodwin. "A spark could set off an explosion and the house goes up or you go down there and that methane smothers you."

Methane is not toxic in water, but it can cause asphyxiation in the air and is highly explosive.

The gas was a hazard for the coal mining industry that once thrived here, and other areas of the Raton Basin, which runs from southern Colorado through northern New Mexico, have had isolated methane seeps into buildings and yards.

Since the mid-1980s, 2,000 methane wells have been drilled in the Colorado portion of the basin.

Thanks to the underground latticework left over from the mining days, methane seeps were a problem - albeit sporadic - even before Petroglyph began pulling methane out in 1998.

No one is quite sure why the seeps are occurring now, and opinions differ about how much Petroglyph is to blame.

"This is like a one-time occurrence within the coal-bed methane industry," said Peter Gintautas, environmental protection specialist in Trinidad for the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. "We really can't find any records of this occurring in this scale."

None of the numerous studies that have been done by the state or Petroglyph say the company's methane operation is responsible. But, the experts say, the company could be.

In methane production, water is pumped from deep underground, which allows the trapped methane to be tapped. Nobody knows why the methane is moving up to the shallower depths water wells draw from, or to the surface.

"There's not scientific consensus. It's still being investigated how the methane got up there," Gintautas said.

And nobody knows if the methane production is making water wells run dry.

"The pumping of water for the production of methane, that production of groundwater can impact surface waters in some areas, depending on the way the geology is situated," said Matt Sares, Chief of Environmental Geology for the Colorado Geological Survey.

He said the agency has not studied if methane extraction is draining wells near Walsenburg.

"We've just come out of a pretty serious drought and there are many factors that can make a well go dry, and it's certainly not an easy thing to sort out," Sares said.

Goodwin, one of the residents, recalled being at a conference of geologists recently.

"I asked the question, ‘Will coal-bed methane drain my well?'" he said. "Half said ‘yes' and half said ‘no.'"

An elusive solution

Water may be the key to solving the methane problem.

Petroglyph wants to reactivate its methane wells, and needs approval from the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

The company has not admitted responsibility for the methane seeps, but, along with supplying water and monitors to residents, it has launched a plan to try to fix the problem.

"We found no real connection at this point, but there's gas in the water wells and the fields, so we made the decision to do what is appropriate to make sure the citizens are safe," said company CEO Ken Smith.

Petroglyph has been venting - but not capturing - gas from methane wells in the area, and Gintautas said it has led to a decrease in methane in water wells.

The next step is to drill a ring of wells to pump out water, remove the methane and inject the water back underground - known as a hydraulic barrier - to block methane from seeping back into the area. The company then hopes to turn its wells back on.

Gintautas said nobody has ever tried to build such a large hydraulic barrier, a mile in diameter.

Some are troubled by the theoretical nature of the project.

"If it works, with the idea of pumping the water back down, it would be great," said resident Mike Hurley, who has been told not to have open flames in his yard because of venting methane. "But I haven't come across anyone who thinks it would work."

In the River Ridge Ranch subdivision, nine homes are built and 20 more are in the works. It is supposed to someday have 152.

"We poured all our lifetime savings into a retirement home, to identify with the American dream," Goodwin said. "We worked for our retirement homes. Now it's all dashed to the ground because of methane."

Bruce Hopke, the homeowner association president, said he is not opposed to methane production here.

"If they eliminate it and get away from it being a hazard to humans and the environment, I'm certain we could co-exist," Hopke said.

"How will I know it's fixed? I can walk in my home and throw the light switch with no fear," Hopke said.

Meanwhile, Kent Smith, the retired teacher who hasn't had water in a year, tries to live with the methane.

He doesn't let his grandchildren play in the part of the yard where the methane has vented, where many of his trees are yellow and dying - he suspects - from the gas. He doesn't mow the part of the lawn where gas has vented, for fear a spark from the mower would cause an explosion.

He knew methane production was here when he moved to the area - one of Petroglyph's wells is on his land.

"I wasn't a complete idiot, but I was willing to live with it," Smith said. "But I didn't think it would affect my water like this."

Some people are trying to sell their houses, without much luck, but Smith has no interest in leaving the natural beauty behind.

He'll just have Petroglyph continue filling his 1,500-gallon cistern with a truck every 10 to 14 days.

"I've decided to try to live as normally as I can and see what comes out. I'm not leaving," he said.