Mercury meters, or manometers, were first used in the 1920s to monitor natural gas wells and pipelines in the state. Some say spills and leaks from those meters have contributed to contamination of fish in 48 water bodies in the state, including the entire Gulf of Mexico.
Officials and environmental advocates say meters installed in more recent years do not use mercury, but many mercury meters remain in the field, as has the mercury that they have leaked or spilled.
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The company also has replaced more than 400 mercury meters with another kind of meter.
On a statewide level, however, cleanup of spills from the meters face obstacles. There is no database of where those meters are and companies’ participation in cleanup in Louisiana is voluntary.
Chairman of the Audubon Council and Tulane geologist Barry Kohl said the state and federal government have made major progress in phasing out other, more major sources of mercury contamination and are beginning to sample fish for contamination.
Kohl also said, however, that “not being addressed by anybody is 20,000 manometers with 10 pounds of mercury each.”
Louisiana Oil and Gas Association President Don Briggs is less than impressed.
EnerVest, said Briggs, “finally just got tired of it.”
“I hated it when they (settled) because they were doing nothing wrong, and absolutely nothing illegal. If it was illegal, the industry would be regulated,” said Briggs. “It’s a damn shame.”
Kohl said, “If a company the size of EnerVest is willing (to clean up to more stringent standards), they feel science is there. The state needs to look at applying the same standards in other parts of the state.”
Cleaning it up
Part of the problem with cleanup, said DEQ Geologist III William “Bill” Schramm, is that there is no “hard and fast number” as to how many manometers remain in the field.
“That’s one of our issues right now,” Schramm said. “It’s really difficult to get a handle on.”
DEQ estimates have ranged from 20,000 to 50,000, with 20,000 being the most circulated number. Briggs said he believes the number is less than that.
Oil and gas companies’ compliance with cleanup has been on a voluntary basis since the 1990s.
From 1991 to 2006, said Schramm, about 5,000 manometer sites were tested. Of those, 2,000 have been cleaned. The other 3,000 were determined not to be contaminated.
A determination either way, however, may not necessarily be accurate, said Schramm.
“The thing about mercury is that it’s very hard to get a representative sample,” he said.
Since mercury collects in balls and is not evenly distributed, “the question is, will they get a ball of mercury or not?”
The DEQ’s acceptable level for mercury in soil is 2.3 parts per million. Schramm said this limit is lower than those of many other states. Environmental advocates said many other states allow less than Louisiana.
“We believe we’re protective with what we established,” Schramm said. “Most of the time, the excavation (as part of site cleanup) gets more than we need. It meets that 2.3 easily.”
Schramm also conceded, however, that he wouldn’t necessarily say cleanup of mercury meters is going well.
There are no year-to-year tallies, and progress has slowed in the past two to three years with companies not coming forward voluntarily.
Schramm said cleanup has “a ways to go.”
“The industry back in the ’80s and ’90s on their own realized it was important for them to get the mercury out of their system. A lot of them went and removed mercury from meters,” he said.
“The big players that came forward cooperated, but as far as going the next step and finding more information we’re a little bit stalled at this point.”
Why it matters
In water
In the state’s 2007 mercury risk reduction plan, a section on mercury in the environment states “mercury spills associated with historic mercury manometer use may represent a significant source of mercury to the environment, especially if the manometer sites were in aquatic or periodically flooded environments.”
The emphasis on flooded environment is where danger may particularly lie.
Forty-eight waterbodies in Louisiana have fishing advisories due to presence of methylmercury, which is the most toxic form of mercury and is the form that accumulates in fish.
Methylmercury can cause neurological impairments in children, infants and fetuses and can poison adults when consumed in large quantities, according to the EPA. Elemental mercury primarily causes health effects when breathed as a vapor, which can happen when it is exposed to open air.
Symptoms of exposure include neuromuscular changes, emotional changes and tremors — and at higher exposures, kidney effects, respiratory failure and death.
Briggs said mercury from the meters “has never hurt anyone. There is no proof. We have had some of the biggest labs come down and study it, look at it.”
A 2004 National Science and Technology Council report on mercury in the Gulf of Mexico, however, says: “Once deposited on the ground, the potential for mercury to become an environmental problem depends largely on whether the deposition location is favorable for the conversion of elemental or ionic mercury to methylmercury. Research suggests that aquatic sediments are where the methylation process most commonly occurs. Especially favorable sites for these processes are wetlands ... low-land southeastern coastal streams ... and streams where pronounced water level fluctuations occur.”
The Atchafalaya Basinkeepers lists “pollution from oil fields including oil waste and mercury pollution” as current threats to the Atchafalaya Basin on its Web site.
Kohl said cleanup is much more complicated in wetland or aquatic areas, adding the state does not have any requirements or cleanup standard for wetlands, lakes or rivers.
Schramm said water sites checked did not find wildlife dying as an effect of mercury, though there has been at least one documented case near Gibson of a bald eagle suffering from mercury poisoning in recent years.
In freshwater, the state Department of Health and Hospitals lists advisories on largemouth bass, black crappie and bowfin in places like Henderson Lake. There are no freshwater warnings in Iberia, St. Martin or St. Mary parishes.
For saltwater fish, there are warnings on king mackerel, cobia, blackfin tuna and greater amberjack in the Gulf. Pregnant women and children younger than seven shouldn’t consume more than one meal (defined as a half pound) a month of those fish. Other adults should not consume more than four meals a month of those fish, the warnings say.
Many local fishermen, however, say the warnings are something they haven’t heard much about.
On land
Mercury is ranked third on the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s “priority list of hazardous substances” under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, commonly known as “Superfund.”
To this, Briggs said, “You’re not supposed to drink the crap. Open (the cabinet under) your kitchen sink and drink anything in there — it’s all hazardous. What the hell isn’t ... you’re not supposed to drink gasoline.”
Briggs also added some companies have cleaned up some sites under the DEQ’s voluntary program.
Though participation in the state DEQ cleanup plan is voluntary, the national Resource Conservation and Recovery Act requires that EPA manage hazardous wastes, including mercury wastes, from the time they are generated, through storage and transportation, to their ultimate treatment and disposal.
States are largely responsible for implementing that program.
There are also natural gas wells and mercury meters, and contamination from them, locally.
A Baldwin resident, Nancy Blanchard, has been fighting pollution from a variety of contaminants, including but not limited to mercury, on her land for years. She declined to comment for this article as the matter is currently in court.
FUTURE
The EPA, said Schramm, is working on a grant to get contractors to come in and locate owners and operators, “finding out who are the players in this operation.”
“We don’t even know who they are. Once we know who they are, we can approach them individually” about putting together a database of where the meters are, he said, adding it’s also complicated by the fact that the people who drill and own wells aren’t necessarily the ones transporting the gas.
“That’s part of our problem — we don’t understand the whole internal workings of that operation. That’s one of the things the EPA will help us with,” he said.
An extreme example is the Monroe field, in which some wells were won and lost in gambling bets, he said.
He said the EPA will soon put out requests for proposals, and they hope to have a report in the first quarter of next year.
Briggs said the industry is not receptive to the idea of a database — an idea that’s been circulated for more than a decade.
“We’re not going to create a new program for them to have something to do ... this is an old, old subject,” Briggs said.
“What they (regulators) are trying to do is ... create jobs for themselves ... a database would be stupid, (time-consuming) and costly.”
“The industry has been very very good at deflecting attention away from it,” said William “Willie” Fontenot, former community liaison officer for the Louisiana Attorney General’s office. Fontenot retired after 27 years, but remains active in environmental issues.
“There’s a lot of interest in pollution and environmental problems, but there are a lot of interests that don’t want these things really dealt with,” he said.
Schramm said the average manometer site costs from $2,000 to $5,000 to clean up, though “if you get into something really nasty, it’s naturally way higher.”
“We want to keep it positive,” he said of volunteer enforcement. “We don’t know that would happen if they were forced to (clean up). We have found this is a good method.”
Kohl and other members of the groups filing suit said they hope the state will require other companies to come forward to meet the same cleanup standards as EnerVest.
“I think what the state should do is contact all the known gas operators who are suspected of using mercury meters and require them to do an inventory of all their properties, and then submit that information to the DEQ and meet with them to come up with a cleanup program for each one of those properties,” Kohl said.
Kohl said wetland areas should be given priority.
“There have not been any fish advisories taken off the list in 12 years because it’s not getting cleaner,” he said.
With cleanup, he said, “Sometime in the future, mercury advisories would be taken off and we would become a sportsman’s paradise again.”
Comments
Travis wrote on Jul 28, 2009 8:08 AM:
ETEE: There is a small amount of mercury in CFLS and they should be probably disposed of in hazardous waste. However, it takes a long time for them to burn out. Also, there are only certain areas in a house where they are appropriate (not a child's room). "
farrow wrote on Jul 27, 2009 10:34 AM:
Indeed, the Daily Iberian won't even let me type these words in my comments (thus the asterisks)! "
ETEE wrote on Jul 26, 2009 10:18 AM: