Jefferson County, AL

Excerpts from a letter to Senator Bingaman -  documenting first-hand experiences of why the oil and gas industry should not be exempted from The Safe Drinking Water Act.

By Peggy Hocutt

Dear Senator Bingaman,

The oil and gas industry is not telling the truth about well contamination resulting from coalbed methane development.  Just because the industry does not document cases, is no reason to believe they don't exist.  The main reason that most of the general public is not aware of  well contamination due to coalbed methane development, is because most people don't have the slightest idea of what a methane gas well is, or an underground aquifer, or the important part it plays in a water well, especially when a methane gas well is fractured.

Peggy Hocutt and husband

I would like nothing better than to be able to tell you my story in person, but since that is not likely to happen, I would like to tell you some of the events that happened to me, my family, and some of my neighbors due to coalbed methane development.

I cannot tell you my story without giving you some family history, and without telling you about the awesome power USX Corporation unleashed on my family when we stood up against well contamination.

My husband worked for Tennessee Coal & Iron/USSteel/USX Corp., for thirty six years, taking his retirement when the Fairfield Works closed in 1983. His father worked there for forty-two years, retiring in 1971.  Our river house, was built in 1952, with family money and labor, on a waterfront lot, leased from Tennessee Coal & Iron/US Steel/now USX Corporation, and located in a remote area of western Jefferson County, Alabama, on the Black Warrior River.  It was built as a vacation house, but became our permanent home.  The years we spent there were wonderful until the late eighties when the area was re-zoned from agricultural lands to heavy industry.

Our problems started when The State Oil & Gas Board, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, issued Permit #5946-C., to USX-Amoco Oil Production, in September, 1988.

The water used in fracturing this gas well was drawn from an abandoned strip mining lake, which had been used for a landfill for years.  Everything from old roofing, trash, creosote lumber, raw household garbage, industrial wastes, junk cars, tires, batteries, paint and oil cans, herbicide and pesticide containers, and dead animals, was dumped in the lake.  During the fracture of this particular gas well, I saw trucks there many times filling their tanks and delivering the water to the methane gas well site I am going to tell you about.

This gas well was hydraulically fractured with radioactive sand proppant, and tagged with radioactive material.  The Board's approval was primarily based on the absence of water wells in the immediate area, but our house and our water well were located at 720 Big Bend Trail, Adger, Alabama 35006, which was well within the immediate area.  This well was fractured in the fall and winter of 1988-1989.  The men who worked in the test laboratory at the drilling site, wore special clothing, and their laboratory bore a radioactive logo.

Early spring, 1989.  When the gas well was operable, the run-off was piped directly from the site to a point and then left to run uncontrolled down a hillside gully, through a culvert, and down a ravine where it then emptied into the slough behind our boathouse.  The run-off was the color of Coca Cola, foamy, with oily streaks in it, and smelled like oil and rotten eggs.  It killed all plant life and water creatures in its path.  I never again saw another salamander, bull frog, or lily pad around our boathouse. I didn't know anything about methane gas wells at that time, but I realized if the run-off killed plant life and water creatures, it certainly posed a potential danger to the health of humans.

I called ADEM, (Alabama Department of Enviornmental Management), and asked for someone to come and take water samples.  No one came.  I called ADEM again, but nobody came and my calls were never answered.  The run-off continued night and day.

May, 1989.  I called a local television station and asked for someone to come and see this operation.  A reporter came, (with CNN now), and did an environmental report on the river, but I saw nothing about this particular gas well.  ADEM finally came, took water samples several times, at our house, as well as other places.  I called for, but never got any results of the testing.

June 1989.  Something prompted a hydrologist from the State Oil and Gas Board, to pay us a visit.  He told me that USX-Amoco, had agreed to shut the operation down until a better way to take care of the run-off could be determined.  He also advised me not to swim in our slough.

I thought this would resolve our problem.  I was wrong, because something was obviously happening to our drinking water well too.  We had 65' of water in a 110' well that had always been wonderful, but within a short time, it turned the same Coca Cola rusty brown, with long slimy tags of gunk that floated in a pitcher, when I filled one.  It ruined everything it touched.  We had to buy our drinking water and send our clothes to the laundry.  Every shower bath left us feeling like we were covered in an oil slick.

By 1989, I was experiencing episodes of severe stomach cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, fevers and unexplained rashes which sent me to the emergency room and to the hospital several times.  I was finally diagnosed with diverticulosis.  I also experienced sudden and unusual, urinary infections.  My urologist was baffled.  He told me that something had traumatized my bladder, just what, he did not know.

My neighbor had the same experience with her water well.  She said it smelled so much like petroleum, she was afraid it was going to explode.  She called and officials from the Oil and Gas Board came.  They accused her of pouring crude oil in her drinking water well.  A reporter interviewed her and made a photograph of her holding a jar of her water.  She mentions a neighbor who is having the same problems.  I am that neighbor.

The equipment at the gas well sat idle from July 1989, until the pre-dawn hours one morning in March, 1991, when I awoke to the sound of voices, and heavy equipment, motors and the clanking of chains and metal against metal, coming from the gas well site.  The next morning, when I looked in that direction, all of the equipment was gone....including a 500 gallon tank of diesel fuel, used to run a generator.  Shortly afterward, I turned my dishwasher, and faucets on, and got huge globs of black, jellied grease, bearing the strong odor of petroleum.  I no longer wondered, but knew at once, that my suspicions were correct, and that the underground aquifer, which supplied our drinking water well was affected by the fracture of the gas well and that I, and my family, were the innocent victims of drinking and bathing in water, contaminated with toxic chemicals and radioactive materials, plus the filthy, bacteria filled water, drawn from the strip mining lake.  A nagging fear about our health, was forever imprinted in my mind.  It will never go away.

Something else happened at the gas well site too.  Special efforts were immediately taken to bulldoze the whole area, cover it with a thick layer of soil, and plant grass, then huge piles of rocks and dirt were bulldozed to block the entrance of the road  leading to the gas well site, and grass was planted there as well.  The USX-Amoco, sign disappeared too.

April 1991. I had a mammogram with good results, but was still having severe attacks of diverticulosis.  February, 1992.  I had breast cancer, a radical mastectomy, and five years of treatment.

March, 1992.  My neighbor, who had complained about her well, had breast cancer, and a radical mastectomy.  She also had a cancer surgically removed from her nose.  Later on, she had a cancerous nodule removed from her breast scar tissue, and took thirty-three radiation treatments.  Later on, about 1995, she was hospitalized and in isolation for several weeks before a doctor from CDC, diagnosed her with a very rare Herpes Pneumonia, (Shingles in her lungs).  Last year, she expressed to me again, her firm belief, and her fear, was that her cancers, and the Herpes Pneumonia, were caused by drinking her well water, which was contaminated by the fracture of the methane gas well, but that her fear of USX, retaliating against her family, like it did ours, was so great, it kept her from trying to do anything about it legally.

My brother and my sister-in-law lived across the street from us and also shared our water well.  In May, 1992.  My sister-in law, had several skin cancers surgically removed.  Since then, she has had numerous cancers surgically removed from different  areas of her head and body.  In August, 1992.  My brother was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  He had surgery. He later had a cancer removed from his ear.

November, 1992.  Another neighbor on my street, had colon cancer.  He took a year of therapy.  All of us lived well within the immediate area of the USX-Amoco gas well, where the Board said no water wells existed.  Since then, there has been five more cases of cancer, with three deaths in the same small area.  The neighbors were reluctant then, and they still are, to speak out about contamination and pollution period, because the land they live on is leased from USX Corporation, and some of them either still work, or they are retired from it, and they are afraid of retaliation, and rightly so.

September, 1994.  We received a mandatory notice from USX Corporation. "Yes," I want to live on USX Lands, or "No," I do not want to live on USX Lands.  Our lease did not expire until December 31, 1994, but in October, 1994, we received a new "License Agreement."  The new document was eighteen pages and forty-nine paragraphs of legal jargon, which mainly stated that if we did sign it, we would drop all lawsuits, and we would have no recourse in the event that we, or any member of our family, was injured, or died, due to any operations being carried out by USX Corporation, or it's Agents, on USX Lands, and that we would have no recourse as far as pollution or contamination on USX Lands was concerned, and that we would offer no resistance should USX corporation, with or without reason, inspect our premises at any time, day or night, and that our License Agreement, could be terminated, without reason at any time, and that USX Corporation, had the right to confiscate our personal possessions and sell them.

We refused to sign this third world document, and when we didn't, USX, entered a summary judgment against us and the judge agreed that we didn't have the right to live on USX Lands, if we didn't sign the new agreement, so we were given thirty days to move forty-four years of family possessions. We were not allowed to sell our home.  We wanted to give our home to a worthy family.  We were not allowed to.  USX Corporation wanted us and our home, removed from the area period, and intended to use us as an example to show the mighty power it held.  We could not move our home, because it was immovable, and if we could have, the financial burden would have been too great.  We lost our forty-four year investment.  USX also demanded, if we did move our house, that the land be put back into the condition it was when we first leased it in 1952.  That task would have been impossible.  The new License Agreement was created by USX Corporation lawyers, to use against us and the rest of the people living there, and anyone who might live on it's lands in the future....people are not too prone to buy a house there now.

You are probably wondering why we didn't move away.  We couldn't.  That was our home, a part of our life, and we were nearly sixty-five years old and had hoped to be able to spend our retirement years there.  We could not just walk away (or thought we couldn't), and leave our investment.  Our home was very comfortable, it was the environment around it that was horrible.

November, 1996.  After our eviction, our house was torn down a board at a time, until nothing remained except the skeleton.  It stood for several weeks as a reminder to the other people living there to keep quiet or suffer the same fate.  We were publicly ridiculed by a USX Corporation Land Agent, who said we were "deadbeats," and "slackers," who just didn't pay our bills, and that was the real reason we were evicted.

I still have episodes of diverticulosis and other health problems. Recently, I was diagnosed with Herpes Zoster (Shingles), in my face, neck and sinus tract.  I lost hearing in one ear and lost my sense of smell and taste. I live in a state of anxiety over my health and that of my husband, because I firmly believe that my health problems and the cancers on both his cheeks, are the results of drinking bathing and shaving, in water contaminated by this coalbed methane gas well.  My husband recently had those two cancers surgically removed from his face, and is facing another one.

I believe that a company or corporation should have the right to operate, and workers should have jobs, but at the same time, they should not be left to police themselves, and they should have a very strict duty to protect the health and welfare of the general public.

On account of coalbed methane development, it's loose permits, lax regulations, and a giant, ruthless corporation, my home is gone.  My good health is gone, our life's savings is gone.  The gas well is gone, covered up, and planted over with grass, and we never had our day in court to tell about it.

Senator Bingaman, you have only read parts of what happened at my house when I still lived there. I ask you please, not to sponsor the Bill to exempt the oil and gas industry from The Safe Drinking Water Act.

Sincerely,

Peggy Hocutt

Alabama