Abandoned Texas well dumps 1.5 million gallons of toxic brine under church lot
A long-dormant oil well beneath a church parking lot in Grandfalls, Texas gushed more than 1.5 million gallons of toxic wastewater across eight days in April, Texas Railroad Commission records show.
The state regulator spent USD 1.49 million sealing the well and a further USD 1.16 million pumping the brine back into the ground. Crews tracked down the wellbore and poured concrete to choke off the flow by April 29.
A Midland lab measured Total Dissolved Solids in the fluid at 138,771 parts per million, roughly four times the salinity of seawater, alongside chloride and sulfate. While the well remained open, the commission asked operators of injection wells within five miles of Grandfalls to suspend underground disposal. The original wellbore is still being investigated, agency spokesperson Bryce Dubee said.
Grandfalls sits on a stretch of the Permian Basin pocked with aging and orphaned wellbores, the kind of legacy infrastructure that can act as an escape route when pressurized produced water injected nearby finds a path back to the surface.
The community has little margin to absorb the disruption. Census figures put the population at 375, with more than 20 percent living below the poverty line and nearly half identifying as Hispanic.
Source: insideclimatenews.org (opens in a new tab)1 sourcePermalink