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Forest Service sued over Katalla Native regional corporation Chugach Alaska says preventing access prevents cleanup Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
Environmental groups, represented by Trustees for Alaska and the National Wildlife Federation, have sued the U.S. Forest Service in federal court in Anchorage, Alaska, asking the court to disallow a permit the Forest Service has issued to Cassandra Energy for exploratory oil and gas drilling at Katalla.
Plaintiffs challenge the finding of no significant impact and special use permit issued by the Forest Service under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Gabriel Scott, Alaska field rep for Cascadia Wildlands Project in Cordova, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, said in a statement that Bill Stevens, owner of Cassandra Energy, left “waste and mess” at Katalla when he was president of “Alaska Crude Corp.,” the company that drilled a dry hole at Katalla in 1985-86. Scott said the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation “has found that Stevens, as principle of Alaska Crude, is responsible for the waste pits and must clean them up before proceeding with this new exploration. To date,” Scott said in the Aug. 12 statement, “no plans have been submitted for this required cleanup.” Reserve pit lined The Department of Environmental Conservation says Scott is wrong.
Judd Peterson, reserve pit closure coordinator at the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, told Petroleum News Aug. 13 the department has issued tentative approval of a cleanup plan for the reserve pit, pending a field inspection of site conditions, and the reports and paperwork necessary for the reserve pit closure project have been filed by Stevens. The department “has also tentatively approved the construction of a new monofill pit for a new test well and has also issued a construction/demolition disposal permit for the clean-up of the old camp and construction debris at the site,” Peterson said.
The 1986 well at Katalla was drilled just after the department began to regulate reserve pits (see story in Aug. 10 issue of Petroleum News) and Alaskan Crude “lined the small reserve pit with a water/oil tight liner. This could well be the first lined drilling waste reserve pit constructed south of the Brooks Range,” Peterson said.
The pit, however, was never capped. Since the original company was out of business, “this was an orphan site under the reserve pit closure program with a reserve pit abandoned as an open impoundment.” Stevens volunteered to do cleanup Bill Stevens, president of Cassandra Energy, told Petroleum News Aug. 13: “DEC determined I was not responsible for cleaning up the Katalla drill site from the Alaskan Crude operation. I volunteered two years ago to clean up that pit. Someone’s got to do it. … I went out and sampled that pit and turned in a very lengthy plan to clean it up.”
Stevens was an executive with Alaskan Crude in the 1980s, but Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Ernesta Ballard said in March that Alaskan Crude and Cassandra Energy “have completely separate legal identities.”
And Stevens said he wasn’t a principle of Alaskan Crude when the drilling occurred, “I had been squeezed out by the time that well was drilled.”
Peterson said Stevens “hired a consultant, collected the required water samples and filed a reserve pit closure plan in compliance with ADEC regulations.” He said testing found no water quality violations at the site and the well was not drilled with oil based muds.
“The proposed closure plan is to de-water the pit, pull the liner over the waste and cap the pit with soil of sufficient thickness so that the area can be used as part of the working pad.” Chugach Alaska Corp. wants project Rick Rogers, vice president for land and resources for Chugach Alaska Corp., an Alaska Native regional corporation, told Petroleum News: “We think it’s the latest chapter in efforts by national environmental groups to deprive Chugach of the benefits from the lands that it has received through ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act). And it’s not the first time.”
Rogers said the Katalla project (drilling an exploration well from private lands to Chugach Alaska subsurface) has gone through an “exhaustive” review process, including “an ACMP review, two environmental assessments by the Forest Service. It was a very exhaustive public process.”
Rogers said he questioned the sincerity of the environmental groups that are part of the court action: “The kind of access they are trying to prevent is what you need to clean up the site.”
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