BLM employees honored for well cleanup

The U.S. Department of the Interior has given a National Environmental Achievement Award to the JW Dalton Legacy Well Cleanup Project Team, a group of 13 Bureau of Land Management employees, six of whom are stationed at the Fairbanks District Office, five at the Alaska State Office in Anchorage, one at the National Business Center in Denver and one at the National Science and Technology center in Denver.

Those recognized in Fairbanks are Robert Schneider, Fairbanks district manager; and, at the Arctic Field Office: Herb Brownell, Arctic team manager; Mike Worley, realty specialist; Susan Flora, environmental scientist; Mike Kunz, archeologist; and Stacie McIntosh, anthropologist. Those recognized in Anchorage are Debbie Hollen, special projects manager; Greg Noble, petroleum engineer; Stan Porhola, petroleum engineer; Leslie Torrence, program analyst; and Wayne Svejnoha, environmental scientist. The Denver, Colo., employees are Tom Morris, environmental specialist and Elaine Flick, contracting officer.

The award recognizes the team’s work in 2005 facilitating the emergency cleanup of the JW Dalton test well site in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and preventing the contamination of the Beaufort Sea.

In 2004, accelerated erosion along the Beaufort Sea in northern Alaska cut about 300 feet of shoreline which put the JW Dalton well casing within 15 feet of the sea. The well’s reserve pit was partially breached. To prevent the release of contaminants into the sea due to additional shoreline erosion predicted in 2005, BLM secured emergency cleanup funds outside of its normal funding cycle and assembled a team of resource, contracting and field specialists to develop and implement an ambitious plan to remove potential environmental hazards from the site during the winter of 2005.

Starting in February and ending in May, 2005, the team worked with a contractor to haul more than 300 truck loads of reserve pit material four miles away to a secure storage location pending final disposal in a landfill. In addition, nearly 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel was removed from the well and the bore was plugged. Within six months of the cleanup, summer storms had washed the project site into the sea.

The winter field work was complicated by the site’s remote location (more than 50 miles from the nearest community), no roads and temperatures averaging 30 degrees below zero. Heavy equipment for the cleanup was hauled overland during the winter and materials and supplies were delivered by air.

As a result of the cleanup, BLM initiated a systematic approach to inventory other old government drilled and abandoned well sites in NPR-A to determine if any other sites were endangered by shoreline erosion. Ten additional sites of concern were identified and BLM began a sampling program to characterize the reserve pit contents of the top three priority well sites.

—Petroleum News