The Biden administration is set to hold an unusual auction next week to lease part of a drinking water reservoir in Corpus Christi, Texas, for oil and gas drilling, but environmentalists worry that further fracking in the area could allow contaminants to leak into drinking water.
The Bureau of Land Management, part of the Department of the Interior, will lease drilling rights to 6,971 acres in and around Choke Canyon Reservoir, Corpus Christi’s largest source of drinking water south of San Antonio. The leased wells are expected to produce more than 628,000 barrels of oil.
The lease sale will take place Aug. 15 in South Texas, a region in the midst of the Eagle Ford Shale oil and gas boom that also experiences widespread degradation of surface water quality, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The city of Corpus Christi and five environmental groups previously opposed the Trump-era lease sale of Choke Canyon Reservoir, citing potential water contamination threats to the city’s drinking water. The Trump administration has denied those concerns, saying there is no evidence that drilling would contaminate the city’s drinking water.
The Biden administration said it would move forward with the latest lease sale because fracking can be done safely and would have only a minimal impact because of the widespread oil and gas drilling around the lake and in the region.
“Oil and gas leasing and subsequent exploration and development are routine and ongoing activities in the region,” the BLM said in its conclusion of no significant environmental impacts.
However, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency, the lake and its waters are contaminated under Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act due to bacteria, algae and excessive salt, likely due to oil and gas development in the region, drought and other factors.
A BLM spokesperson said in an email that the agency has not received any formal protests about the 2024 lease sales.
However, prior to the environmental review of the lease sale, the BLM received five public comments, all of which expressed concerns about the impacts of oil and gas drilling on water quality, air quality, climate change and the environment. The BLM also received a request to halt the oil and gas lease sale. The BLM did not identify the people who commented in its environmental assessment.
The Center for Biological Diversity, which led the group protesting the 2017 auction, did not comment or protest the lease sale because the group learned about it too late to do so before the BLM’s June 12 protest deadline, said Wendy Park, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.
“They don’t notify parties who may be affected by the lease sales,” she said. “The BLM has very little land in Texas.” And in Texas, where most onshore oil and gas is managed by the state, few groups are willing to pay attention to the BLM’s leasing activities.
“Loss of public trust”
Corpus Christi officials strongly opposed leasing the reservoir in 2017 and urged the BLM to withdraw the lake leasing proposal.
In a 2017 protest letter, then-Mayor Margie Rose said the city was concerned that the parcels being auctioned, like this year’s lease sale, were within or adjacent to the city’s drinking water supply, even though Choke Canyon Reservoir is surrounded by oil and gas activity.
“The City is concerned that the proposed leases pose a high risk to the safety of the water quality in each reservoir,” the city wrote. “If a water quality incident were to occur as a result of the proposed lease agreements, the City will pursue all available remedies, but these will not be sufficient to compensate for the millions of dollars in lost economic benefits and loss of public trust.”
The BLM responded to the city’s concerns by saying Corpus Christi officials could not substantiate the city’s concerns and that oil and gas companies are not allowed to disturb the surface of leased land because they drill from far away. A similar provision is set to be imposed on new leases this year.
Rhodes, who has since left Corpus Christi city government, did not respond to a request for comment.
The city did not protest the Aug. 15 lease sale, but Corpus Christi Water Department officials are monitoring oil and gas activity around the reservoir today, Corpus Christi Water Department spokeswoman Judy LaPointe said.
She declined to comment on the city’s current position on leasing the reservoir or what has changed since 2017.
The Bureau of Reclamation agreed to lease sections of the reservoir as long as drilling could be done from surrounding non-federal lands and drilling companies could prove their work would “not have any potential impacts” on Choke Canyon Reservoir, said agency spokesman Sterling Reck.
Sacrifice Zone
Environmental groups argue the Biden administration is contributing to the environmental impacts of drilling in Texas, a state with little federally controlled land or minerals.
Park, of the Center for Biological Diversity, said the BLM has “ignored” concerns about water quality in areas that are sacrifice zones for oil and gas drillers.
He said fracking could allow abandoned oil wells in the area to leak hydrocarbons into the reservoir.
“The cumulative risk increases with each additional well that is drilled,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas, one of five groups that protested the 2017 lease sale.
Oil and gas leases on Bureau of Reclamation lands are rare: In the past decade, the agency has signed just 12 leases on lands in its jurisdiction, which covers Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, 11 of which are in Texas, said David Howell, a bureau spokesman.
