Consumer Energy Hooks Up the Pump in Heritage Park

The pump in Heritage Park was not working for a while now even though the generator was roaring all the time. I thought it was not necessary after Savoy had the well re-drilled a week ago. Today Consumer Energy was connecting the well area to the grid on Heritage Park, temporarily blocking off driving access to the lower part of the Park (disk golf and model plane field). As soon as they had the box hooked up the pump started working - indicating that the generator did not provide enough power?

Today (August 9) the pump was off and the generator is still roaring despite having electricity from the grid. Seems wasteful to me...

 

 

Look what's Back at Heritage Park

Pump stopped working. Guess there is not enough pressure to push the oil through the pipeline to Witt Farm.

Nature's Beauties and Rarities at Heritage Park

To get an idea what we are messing around with - and what we are endangering besides our own health - and our children's livelihood, I post a few pictures of beautiful and rare species that can be found in Heritage Park.
 

 

Festive Tiger Beetle, Cicindela scutellaris, subspecies lecontei - new record for Lenawee county 7/3/2013

 

American toad

 

Juvenile Eastern Box Turtle.  Special Concern species in MI. Found in Heritage Park 7/4/2013

Oil Pump in Heritage Park - Pipeline Drill on the Purse Property

Now we have a oil pump going at Heritage Park.

Meanwhile there is some more drilling going on on the Purse Funeral Home well site but it looks like a pipeline drilling to pump the black gold to the Witt Farm processing facility.

Massive dust clouds on Witt Farm indicated the extension of the current facility to process all the new wells that were added lately. My guess is that the oil from between 4 and 8 wells will soon flow there - and also all the flare gases will be burned off hidden in that barrel. "What you can't see is not there"...

Drilling Rig Disappeared from Heritage Park

24 hours later - the horizontal drilling rig disappeared from Heritage Park. Note the tarp-covered structure behind the "Christmas tree". Seems to me that they drilled horizontally to connect the Heritage Park pipeline to somewhere else. Maybe the site on Carson Highway?

Heritage Park Well Site 6/13/2013 6:20 pm

Drilling in Heritage Park for the 3rd Time - Lot of Activities off Carson Highway

What a shock to see a derrick going up in Heritage Park at the same drill site for the 3rd time - after Savoy meticulously cleaned up the site for production? What changed their mind?

At the same time a lot of drilling and leveling goes up off Carson Highway. It is not looking like a oil drilling rig - and there is a lot of grading and digging going on as well. Only thing I can think of is - another pipeline to Witt Farm?

Maybe the two things are connected? To make good use of the now purchased Witt Farm property Savoy consolidates processing and transportation their?

Heritage Park Wells are Hooked-Up to Witt Farm - Flare Now Larger

Yesterday morning, the central processing facility on Witt Farm, which is currently setup to receive 4 wells, was temporarily of grid.

4 broiler/separator chimneys - and

4 tanks are indicating that 4 wells are currently exploited on Witt Farm

The flare did not burn for a few hours while the temporarily plugged wells in Heritage Park and the pipeline were primed for production.

The hidden flare in the open barrel chimney was not visible yesterday morning

However, by about 6:00 pm the flare was back and seemed to produce more heat and soot than before. This is only the visible consequences of the now increased production of oil AND gas and volatiles that contain several poisonous and cancerous chemicals - beyond bad smell that will impair the health of many residents in at least a mile radius around the flare - depending on the wind direction and wind speed.

By 6:00 pm, the flare was back and seemed much larger. See the hot air swirling around on to of the chimney and the darkening indicating more soot.

 More is soon to come when the drilling operation on the neighboring landscaping business will hit oil.

Meanwhile the drill site at Heritage Park is now abandoned of workers and equipment and looks almost peaceful if you forget that the black gold is now flowing 4 feet underneath the ground, and the drilling mud was buried under ground in a sandwich of plastic tarps.

Pipeline connected - Heritage Park drill site is being prepared to deliver to Witt Farm

Brine trucks are at the Heritage Park drill site all day. They seem to prepare the delivery of the 3 wells connected to the bore hole to deliver oil and - unfortunately also poisonous and cancerous flare gases and volatiles to Witt Farm.

At the disc golf area everything is now underground - as if not really there...

There is also a lot going on at Witt Farm to prepare for the receipt of the new wells - eventually also from the new drill site on Stratton's Landscaping. The number of separators will tell us how many wells will be processed soon - more oil coming in - and more truck traffic - and the flare will get much bigger - their poisonous gases and volatiles will get much more concentrated...

Heritage Park Pipeline Almost Done

Horizontal drilling down the floodplain and crossing Beaver Creek from the farmland West of Howell Highway.

The following pictures from the Michigan Mears Group Inc. illustrate how they drilled down in an angle and repositioned the flexible drill to come out almost at the target site in Heritage Park, marked with the red plastic fences.

Then they widen the bore hole and pull the welded pipes in.

Good thing in a lot of bad things: they did not need to bulldoze the woods to clear a passage from the disc golf area to the creek.

After yesterday's events, the road is blocked off slightly more professional, the work area, however, was not marked at all - until the actual exit point of the drills. We stayed far away on the driveway to the model plane club. I used my zoom to get a shot of the red fenced-in structure. All but 2 tubes were gone - must have been pulled into the bore hole one by one - this means the pipeline is probably functional by the end of the week.

Drilling of Pipeline under Beaver Creek Continues - New Drilling Site on Property of Stratton's Landscaping

After postponing the operations due to a soccer tournament (how nice of Savoy!), they continued to work on the pipeline today - and they started drilling for oil on the property of Stratton's Landscaping - as previously suspected by Victoria.

Large Drilling Derrick on Stratton's. Location of Site on Map Below.

 Today's investigational journalism got us a home visit of the state police. Savoy had the driveway down to the disc golf area blocked off. However, nobody stopped us from walking down there.

I approached the new construction site at the end of the buried pipes down at the disc golf area - and was approached by a nice young man from the construction company to whom I talked before. He told me that I should not approach the construction site any closer, which I respected. The reasons given were liability issues. I took some more pictures, Amy and I talked a little more with the guy, who threw sticks for our dog. On our way back to the car, I was approached by a gray-haired - casually dressed guy, who I have seen around the Heritage drilling site before. (Edit: Jack Rokos is Savoy's Operations Manager). He told me he was from the oil company and ordered me quite aggressively to stay away from "his" construction site and I assured him that we will do so - and that we obeyed before and did not approach the site closer than about 100-200 yards. By the way, there were also disc golfers down there that were not approached by the oil and construction staff - and were not any further away...I wonder why we get a special treatment???  

I tried to get some more information about the final drilling process to connect the pipelines and after confirming that drilling was done vertically and horizontally from up off Howell Highway and would reach exactly to the end of the buried pipes at the disc golf area, and that no clearing of the woods towards Beaver Creek would be necessary, he changed his mind and would not give out any other useful information. We assured him that we would stay away from the actual construction site and started walking down a beautiful, lush green path, that was heading towards the drilling noise from the new drilling site on Stratton's. The path did not really get us closer to make any pictures from public land and ended soon at a pretty deteriorated fence to private property, which we - as it is our principle - did not enter. During this walk in the woods we heart 2 bangs that sounded like small gas explosions (between 2 and 2:15 pm). In the favor of believing in the good of people, I was thinking that that's why we were asked to stay at a safe distance...

 We went back to the car to see that now 3 cars were blocking the driveway down to the disc golf and model plane area. We drove away and wanted to see if we could get a better shot of the drilling rig on Stratton's from the Skating compound, when we realized that one of the three cars was following us. We did a loop around the old farm building on Heritage and went behind the truck that probably was send to follow us? 

  We went across the street to the skating ring and I took a few pictures of the rig (see above), when we realized a state police car pulling into Heritage Park - sure enough - we soon had two friendly officers in our apartment hallway at home - that wanted to follow up with us what was going on - while assuring us that no complaints were filed. They stated that Savoy leased the City Parks and would therefore have the right to limit - or completely forbid access to a public park during its operations - or for a prolonged time. They also warned us that our friendly dog could get into trouble when approaching workers - which was surely not a problem with today's worker, who threw Faith's stick for her.

All-in-all I do not know what I should make out of this day's occurrences. I do certainly not believe that a lessee of mineral rights is authorized to shut down a public park - not even forbid access to areas beyond the immediate work area. As I stated before, I do not trespass on private property, especially if it is clearly marked as such - and I respected the "orders" of the worker and the oil company guy to stay at a save distance from the construction site, without the site being properly marked as such, or a clear statement in any ordinance stating to stay lets say 200 yards away from oil and gas operations...
I cannot shake the feeling off that Savoy - and a few beneficiaries of the oil boom in our city - are getting irritated and start to harass me and the investigational journalism that I try to develop. It began with the city police being called in when I showed a team of the Toledo Blade around. Again, we stayed off of clearly marked or obvious private properties - and no closeup pictures of persons were taken - beside mine, which I was OK with. I actually just received a harassing phone call of somebody, who obviously profits from the oil hysteria in Adrian - and did not like the pretty mallow article in the Toledo Blade...

If my humble careful writing and pictures are causing such inappropriate response - then there is maybe a reason why people get nervous - there is maybe really something they want to hide - and not bring to public notice?
Luckily, what I am doing is not depending on me alone and there are more people involved in this matter than can be easily threatened and silenced!

Location of the new drilling operation. I hope the pipeline from that well will not also cross Beaver Creek to reach Witt Farm

Current wells around Witt Farm - check them out on your own at:

http://ww2.deq.state.mi.us/GeoWebFace/

Pipeline from Heritage Park to Witt Farm still on Halt

Just a brief update. The pipeline is under ground - the only piece still missing is a short clearcut from the disc golf area to Beaver Creek, passing very close to a county drain, going under the bed of Beaver Creek, climbing up the flood plain bluff, and connect to the pipes waiting on the farmland West of Howell Highway. I don't know what they waiting for? It is already 3-5 days...Maybe permits or scheduling of another 3rd party crew??

Corrections of the Recent Article in the Toledo Blade

As much I appreciate the Blade reporting about the activities of the oil and gas industry in Adrian in their recent article: http://www.toledoblade.com/Energy/2013/05/13/Adrian-residents-air-concerns-about-oil-wells-in-popular-park.html , several parts of the article were incorrect, misleading or my statements were not properly presented:
1. The structure on the well in Heritage Park is NOT a drilling rig like the one a worker was injured on but a approx. 30 ft. high pressure cap.
2. I stressed to the journalist what a gamble is played with environmental integrity when putting 5 pipes over about a mile 4 ft. underground to pump crude oil from wells in the park to the central processing facility crossing the flood plain of River Raisin, going underneath Beaver Creek and climbing 80 ft up the floodplain bluff to the tank farm. Unfortunately, this did not find its way into the article.
3. My concerns about the air quality around the central processing facility on Witt Farm follow the fact that poisonous and cancer-causing gases and vapors of currently 2 wells are flared off inside of a chimney on Witt Farm - and as soon the pipeline is connected - two more wells from Heritage Park will be flared.
4. In addition, I spoke of Heritage Park not being my sanctuary but a sanctuary for animals, plants, landscapes and ecosystems that are rare or even absent in most of Lenawee County, Michigan today - and especially absent close to the City of Adrian.

Pipeline Now Also Buried on the Floodplain

Unfortunately, I was wrong - seems to be no problem to submerge the pipes totally under water. Note the dark, almost black swamp muck indicating that the soil is soaked with water for a substantial part of the year.

 Now only the 10 pipes to go through the woods, under Beaver Creek and up the bluff are lined up next to the newly buried pipes.

 Here is the end of the buried pipes. You can see the 2 stakes shown later that indicate the direction of the connecting piece.

 And the PE pipe to bring the flare gases and vapors to Witt Farm.

 I hope they will not do too bad of a clearcut to put the pipes through the woods - and I am really curious how they will put the pipes under the creek.