Just Another Oil Leak IN A NATIONAL MONUMENT

Ho-hum. That's all. Just another oil leak. Er, actually two. So, TWO oil leaks ... One in a National Monument, another 3 miles away in a -- oh, don't worry, it's only a National Forest. They're meant to be raped, pillaged, then burned -- right? I'm not making the burning part up, either.

Photo courtesy of Leah Hogston
of the Salt Lake Tribune. Dark
sandy areas are oil/tar.

That's the way Utah -- or at least the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) -- seems to be responding to disastrous news that two leaks were recently discovered in the Dixie National Forest and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM). The first leak was found by hikers on Saturday, March 22nd in Little Valley Wash and reported to the BLM, which oversees the Grand Staircase, on Monday the 24th. Little Valley Wash is part of the headwater system of the Escalante River, a stream responsible (along with its tributaries) for carving many of the region's spectacular canyons. The hikers initially identified between three and four miles of affected streambed. The story first appeared in the press in an article for the Salt Like Tribune by reporter Brian Maffly on March 26th, and fortunately the paper appears to be keeping close track of the disaster.

The second leak was discovered by the US Forest Service on March 24th in the Upper Valley Oil Field, which supplies the pipeline responsible for the first leak. The second leak was featured on April 2nd in a Salt Lake Tribune article by Christopher Smart. This oil field is part of the Dixie National Forest, with the second leak straddling the border of the two parks; both sites are leased and operated by Citation Oil Company of Houston, Texas.

Photo courtesy of Leah Hogston of the Salt Lake
Tribune. Scorched areas around pond show where
floating crude oil was burned off the water. 

It is appalling that this has not made any national news. GSENM is supposedly the "crown jewel" of the BLM's National Landscape Conservation System, yet the agency was basically trying to give the oil company a free pass within three days of the story breaking, claiming the spill occurred 40 years ago and was only recently mobilized by flash flooding. The BLM's special informational site regarding the spill, while talking a good talk about environmental experts and remediation plans, provides few details and only four utterly useless photographs. The two Salt Lake Tribune articles mentioned above have much higher-quality photo galleries live, here and here.

Yours truly in Dixie National Forest, moments before
a hummingbird landed on my right knee. 

The Dixie National Forest is both beautiful in its own right, and adjacent to three national parks and two national monuments. The area is famous as part of "The Grand Circle" of national parks and monuments that millions of people visit annually, literally among the United States' most stunning landscapes, including the immediately adjacent Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, and other iconic Utah locales like Canyonlands and Arches National Parks.

I personally cut my teeth as a geologist in this area, so I know firsthand how almost preposterously fragile these desert ecosystems are without deadly oil pipeline leaks. Many parks in the area have signs reading "Don't Bust the Crust!," explaining that even stepping off-trail just a few feet can cause years' worth of damage to these delicate soil habitats. Many of the lovely photos you see on this blog were taken very near these leaks.

Those specks of white are my campsite amid the Paunsagunt Cliffs
of Dixie National Forest.

Local residents of Escalante, Utah, touring the Little Valley Wash spill with reporter Brian Maffly called the gruesome scene their "Little Valdez."

One perspective not discussed in any detail so far, though, is water. (For the geo-nerds, "the hydrogeologic ramifications of the mobilized contaminants.") See, the sand and sandstones that so indelibly define this region in the public consciousness are basically enormous sponges. Sandstone makes an excellent aquifer because the spaces between the sand grains, called pore spaces, can make up to 30% of the rock's volume. Unfortunately sandstones don't merely slurp up any water that happens along; they guzzle nearly any fluid that happens by -- including oil. The fact that oil was found along four miles of a stream bed, and is acknowledged by BLM to have a significant underground component at the second leak site (and leaked into a pond there to boot) means that these oil spills have already contaminated local aquifers. Every creature downstream of these leaks that drinks from a stream or pond, or pumps water from their well to their kitchen sink is now in danger of poisoning. While crude alone may not move very quickly through such materials, lighter fractions of the petroleum mixture will constantly dissolve, bit by tiny bit, ensuring a slow, excruciating poisoning of the area.

Lower Calf Creek Falls, one of my favorite spots on the planet,
is only a few  miles from these leaks.

The Forest Service and BLM are talking about removing standing water and some of the soils near the contamination sites on the ground surface, but sadly many contaminants will certainly have already infiltrated the ground and aquifers below. In order to understand how far the contamination has spread, many, many monitoring wells will have to be drilled. Water well drill rigs will have to be driven all over this delicate, parched landscape to figure out the true spatial extent of the damage. While the generally dry conditions will have slowed the capillary seepage of these petrochemicals down, out, and away, the fact that the leaks occurred an indeterminate-yet-not-short time ago means that these two agencies, already chronically underfunded, will be struggling to play catch-up, and may never truly be able to clean up all the oil spilled in this rugged, difficult terrain. Yes, Citation theoretically should be on the hook for the cleanup ... but as the last oil pipeline spill managed to glean a whopping $53,000 out of the behemoth Chevron, only a fool would expect Citation Oil will be held to the many, many millions of dollars this sort of cleanup will cost.

The BLM was quick to point out that with nearly two million acres to watch over in the Grand Staircase (and another two million in Dixie National Forest under the care of the Forest Service), they "can't be on every acre all the time." That may be true, but only a few of those acres have active oil fields -- and as these are not even Citation's first ... er, citations ... it would seem to behoove these agencies to keep vigilant eyes upon these specific locales. This oil field turns fifty this year, and with apparently no major renovations, these incidents are likely to not only continue, but increase in frequency. Local environmental group Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance stated "If BLM and the Forest Service don’t have the resources to protect our public lands, they shouldn’t be leasing them,"and I fully agree. (Quote courtesy of Christopher Smart's Tribune article.)

As profoundly as these lands have affected me, it is not only for the usual "future generations" that Utahns and all of us that love the Southwest must shout and work and cajole these agencies to do what's right -- it is for me, and for you, and your better half, and mine.

The view up the canyons of the Escalante River in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

For the full, very well-reported stories, I highly recommend you read the two pieces by Brian Maffly, and the third by Christopher Smart. Watch the Salt Lake Tribune (@SLTrib) and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance's Facebook page and Twitter feed (@SouthernUTWild) for updates on the situation.