Leslie: All right.
So it's now 1:30.
So we're going to go ahead and get started
with the second in this series of webinars
hosted by the Railroad Commission.
If you were able to join us yesterday,
we welcome you back to the second webinar
that's going to focus on the voluntary cleanup program
with the Railroad Commission today,
as well as some other resources available to Brownfields.
I am gonna at the end of this presentation
also expand on some of the topics we discussed yesterday.
If you weren't able to join us yesterday
then welcome for the first webinar here.
And so we're gonna go ahead and get started.
Okay.
Just so before we dive into everything,
we wanted to give you guys sort of a face
to the voices that you're going to be hearing today.
My name is Leslie Bruce,
I'm going to be the main presenter today.
I am the voluntary cleanup program
and Brownfield program coordinator
here at the Railroad Commission.
If you joined us yesterday,
you kind of already heard about my background,
but any of you who are just joining us today,
I received a BS in Geology from university of South Carolina
and an MS in Geology from UT Austin.
I've been with the Railroad Commission since 2017,
working in two different groups before I became the VCP
and Brownfield coordinator in April of 2019.
And so today we also have a couple of panelists
that are joining us.
Peter Pope,
he's not actually going to be able to join us today,
but I wanna kind of introduce him
since he plays a very important role
in the voluntary cleanup program.
He's who signs off on all of our certificates of completion
and has the final review of all sites before closure.
So Peter is the manager of the site remediation section.
He's been with the Commission since 2001.
He has a BS in Geology from Purdue
and an MA in Geology from Rice.
And he has more than 25 years of experience
doing risk-based assessments.
And then we also have Art Correa with us today.
He's the project manager of the State Managed Cleanup Group,
which we're gonna talk about in our group,
but I'm gonna let Art introduce himself real quick.
Art: Thank you Leslie.
Yes, welcome everybody.
I hope you enjoy the webinar.
My name is Art Correa,
I've been with the Commission since 1991
and been over the State Managed Cleanup Program since 2014.
And I've been out in this industry for about 40 plus years.
That's it, thank you.
Leslie: Thanks Art.
Okay, and so Peter and I are going to
help well, Art today is going to help facilitate
some questions that I might not be able to answer
for the State Managed Cleanup Program.
And then we're also going to have Keith May.
So Keith is with the State Funded Plugging Program,
which we're also going to touch on
and he will help answer some questions at the end.
Well Keith do you want to go ahead
and introduce yourself as well?
Keith: Leslie.
Good afternoon, everybody, my name's Keith May.
Got my engineering degree from UT Austin back in 2011.
Worked for the industry as a wireline engineer
for a couple of years,
then joined up with the Commission on 2013.
And I've been part of the State Funded Program
for a couple years now, two or three years now.
Yeah, thank you Leslie.
Leslie: Awesome, thank you Keith.
All right, so today's agenda,
we're going to go over kind of just
what the Voluntary Cleanup Program is
and what it's designed to do.
We'll go over the property eligibility, site enrollment,
whether or not you should be within the Railroad Commission
or TCEQ's VCP program.
We'll go over some,
the application and approval process,
your required documents from start to finish
within this program.
Some oversight fees,
since this is a program that you have to pay to be in,
and then some examples of VCP sites.
And then near the end,
we're going to dive into the statement
cleanup program and state funded plugging program,
which we talked about yesterday,
which have funds that are available
for you for Brownfield's participants or applicants.
So just as a reminder,
that if you have any questions during this webinar,
please submit them to the SR-VCP-BRP@rrc.texas.gov
So we're going to be monitoring that email address
and we'll answer questions at the end.
And if we're not able to get to all of the questions today,
don't worry, we're going to send each and every one of you
an individual response.
So I know where you're going to get a response,
either via email or on screen today.
And then if you don't have that written down yet,
don't worry that email address is going to be located
at the bottom of each slide.
So you'll be able to kind of see that as we go along.
Okay, so what is the voluntary cleanup program?
Why are you guys here today?
Or why should you care?
So the program is designed to incentivize remediation
of contaminated sites in Texas.
And so the way we're doing that is by providing
regulatory oversight of that remediation and assessment.
And then, and especially with Railway Commission,
these are oil and gas sites.
And once you've completed this program
and we've provided that regulatory oversight
and given you approval to appropriately close it out,
you then will receive a release of liability from the state.
So one of the most important things to take away
from this webinar and why VCP is so important
is that release of liability.
So you know, if you are taking on the assessment
and remediation of a site,
you are taking on that liability,
but if you go through our program and appropriately
clean it up per your closure strategy,
you're going to receive this release of liability
from the state,
which transfers to not only you as the property owner,
but also any future property owners and lenders,
any borrowers, any leasers, anything like that,
that's gonna be associated with a property
that release of liability is also going to transfer to them.
So, program eligibility.
So the applicant can not have caused
or contributed to the contamination on the property.
If you weren't sure you have caused
or contributed contamination,
you would likely be probably needing
to be in the operator cleanup program.
So that's a really big
distinction here for this program.
And then activities have to be under the jurisdiction
of the Railroad Commission.
And there has to be no unresolved federal
or state enforcement on a property.
And then similar to the Brownfields program
that we talked about yesterday,
the applicant and the landowner have to agree
to cooperate with the Railroad Commission.
So here again, we just want to point out
that you do not have to be the landowner
to be the applicant,
you can be, but it's not required.
But if you are not the landowner,
you have to have that landowner's consent
to be in the program.
And so a lot of times what we'll see is you'll have
potentially the future landowner is actually the applicant
and they want to go through this process
before they purchase their property to ensure that,
you know, they're not taking on that liability
before purchasing, or sometimes the opposite
where
it's the current operators going through this program
on the contention that once they sell it
to the new purchaser,
that this will have been taken care of by that point.
Okay.
So this is probably the number one thing you need
to ask yourself once you probably get your phase one back
for your site is, does this site belong
with Railroad Commission or TCEQ VCP's program
or potentially another program within TCEQ.
So we really can't make that determination for you
because in order to make that determination,
you needed to make your application,
submit your fees and everything associated with it.
And so instead of doing that,
the best thing that we can suggest to you
is just to consult with an oil and gas attorney
to determine whether or not to see which program
would be more appropriate or an environmental attorney,
but you can also refer to the memorandum of understanding
between the Railroad Commission and the TCEQ.
So that can be found at the 16 Texas Administrative Code
three point 30.
And that kind of details the jurisdictional divides
between the two agencies.
But I think it's also important to point out
that you can actually be duly enrolled
in the Railroad Commission and TCEQs VCP program
at the same time.
We have a lot of sites where there's been historical oil
and gas activities
and then there's more modern industrial activities.
And you can clearly distinguish the contamination
and sources from both.
And in that case, you know,
the Railroad Commission will deal with everything
we have jurisdiction over and TCEQ will deal
with everything they have jurisdiction over,
and we'll talk amongst each other to make sure, you know,
we're not giving any conflicting information
between the two agencies.
So the application approval process.
So I like to call it the application package
because it's more than just the application
that you're required to submit
when you're applying to our program.
So obviously you'll have to have the signed application
and agreement, which you can find on our website
that you can download that.
You download it and print it out
and can fill it out and then mail it to us.
But also that along with that,
you need the application fee of a $1,000
and the surcharge of $1,500.
And then you need a phase one site assessment
of the entire property that is going to be enrolled.
So we really ask that you not submit your application
until you have a phase one.
Also because that phase one,
that's gonna really help you to determine
which program your site belongs in.
And then that phase one is also going to help us dictate
what needs to happen at the site.
So really, do not submit an application
without the phase one.
So approval process,
we'll review all the documents that you submitted above
and any reports that are also submitted.
We'll also conduct a legal review,
the applicant and the property to ensure that
that applicant did not cause or contribute to contamination.
And then within 45 days of receiving
the full application package,
we'll issue either an approval or a denial letter.
Okay.
So closure options within the voluntary cleanup program.
So here it's important to point out
that the applicant chooses their own closure strategy
at time of applying based on
their desired future use of the property,
or the applicant can choose their closure strategy
based on site-specific conditions.
So essentially if you've already done say,
phase one and phase two or even more assessments
before you apply, which you're allowed to do,
you can use the data to drive your closure strategy.
But if you've only done a phase one and you know,
you're not sure what the data is going to provide
but you know you want to close residential
or with no conditions, then that's totally fine as well.
The only thing is that we essentially are asking that,
you know, you have to demonstrate
that your closure strategy,
whichever one you choose is going to be protective
of human health and the environment as laid out
in the Texas risk reduction program.
And then I also want to point out,
cause this gets brought up a lot,
do we, does the Railroad Commission implement
the Texas risk reduction program that TCQ created?
So yes, we are following all those guidelines.
And so all of your assessments and cleanups
need to be done to those standards.
And then you can click,
you can change your closure strategy at any time.
You, the only thing we request is that
if you do change your closure strategy,
you just resubmit the application agreement
to reflect that change.
There won't be any charges associated with that.
We just want to document in the file
that there's been a change.
Okay, so let's go into your different closure options.
And especially, I like to clarify these
since we get a lot of questions about them.
Since there are several options you can go with,
you're gonna find this on page five of the application
and page three of the agreement.
So one option would be to clean up to background levels.
And so that would be an unconditional closure,
but background levels really is intended
for metal and chloride contamination,
where you can establish a background concentration,
and then you're cleaning up the site to that level.
The second option is going to be a risk-based cleanup
for residential levels.
So again, another unconditional closure,
but that one's going to be risk-based
as opposed to background levels.
And so risk-based, we're going to be turning to
the Texas risk production
protective concentration levels for that.
Okay, so in next two slides we're going
to talk about conditional closure.
So these are going to be closures
with a restrictive covenant or institutional control.
I think they're essentially the same thing we just,
and interchange those words.
But so it's important here to now
that a conditional closure,
you can have a residential closure
with an institutional control.
In that case, it would just be an institutional control
for the groundwater use.
So you can have residential closure on the surface,
groundwater use restriction.
You could just have a surface
land use restriction
in which it's going to be to commercial industrial uses,
but have no ground water use restriction,
or you can have both where you are limiting
the use of that property to just commercial industrial,
and also limiting the use of a certain amount
of feet of groundwater.
So these are kind of your,
these are typically the options that we come across.
And then the last option,
we really don't see many of these,
but this is when you're going to be,
you're going to have an institutional control,
but you're also going to have
an engineering control with that.
So this is going to be like an engineering cap
or ventilation system.
There's other options,
but those are probably one of the two most common.
Okay, so VCP application and agreement.
Again, that's on our website, that's a required document.
A metes and bounds description of your property
is also required.
This is really important cause that's kind of documenting.
This is exactly the property metes and bounds
where we did this assessment.
And that is exactly where the certificate of completion
and release of liability extends to you.
It does not go past metes and bounds property description.
And that's important in case for whatever reason,
your property,
you gain another property and kind of combine those two.
So for the records, we will want to clearly define
which area has been assessed appropriately.
You can go ahead and send that in with your application,
that's probably the best thing to do,
but you're not required to send in with your application.
And then, so you're required a phase one site assessment
and for anyone who currently doesn't know,
this is an assessment that needs to be performed
by a professional environmental firm.
And they're gonna essentially do a records review
of the property.
They'll look at sort of the history of the site
and interview people who are familiar with it
to get an idea of what might have occurred on this property
that might've caused contamination.
And so they'll identify what we call
recognize environmental conditions
and all of those need to be assessed.
And so the phase two is when actually,
again, another engineering firm needs to do this
and have their PGS EGC on it or engineering seal.
But this is when they're putting in soil samples
and or groundwater monitoring wells
to determine the extent of any contamination
that is potentially there.
Another document I put it under required documents,
although it's not technically required,
but it's the closure report.
So this is going to be a summary of everything
that occurred at the site.
We strongly encourage this just because
that easily summarizes everything for staff
to be able to review it and then more readily rate the
certificate of completion for you.
And then affidavit of completion.
So that's going to be a document,
it's sort of a template document that the Commission
will send to you once we've given you final approval
of closure and you're essentially gonna sign
and notarize it.
And it's stating that, you know,
everything's been appropriately assessed and cleaned up
to the appropriate standards based on your closure strategy
and that no further action is needed at the site.
So some as-needed documents,
this would be like a remedial action plan
if you actually need to do remediation at the site.
You're not required to submit a remedial action plan,
but we really strongly encourage that
because the last thing you want is to go out
and do all this remediation work,
generate a final report,
pay a lot of money to mobilize those engineers,
the engineering field staff, and then to submit it to us,
and then we have a lot of additional questions or requests
and we have to re-mobilize out there.
So the best suggestion I can make
is just go ahead and submit a remedial action plan
and let us review it and make sure that, you know,
we think it's appropriate and everything's being addressed.
The other one is if you do have groundwater contamination,
would be groundwater monitoring reports,
we really request,
we strongly encourage that groundwater monitoring occurs
or groundwater sampling occurs on a quarterly basis
until the concentrations of your contaminant
are stable or declining.
We also request that if you change the frequency
of that sampling that you notify us for doing so,
and kind of get our sign off on it.
That is not required,
you're allowed to change that whenever you'd like.
But again,
since this program is us providing regulatory oversight,
it's we really encourage everyone to kind of get approval
for that and make sure it's appropriate for, you know,
what we're seeing in groundwater.
And then the other as-needed document
would be a restrictive covenant
or as I kind of referred to it in the last slide,
would be an institutional control.
And that's if you're going to close the site out
with groundwater use restriction
or land use restriction or both.
Okay.
So project timeline and schedule.
Probably as you've already started to figure out
with this program,
the applicant's determining everything here, really.
So you're, so the applicant is going to create
their own project schedule and submittal deadlines.
So on page four of the agreement,
you'll see all the different reports that, you know,
you could submit to us and there's kind of a blank next
to them where you can type in a date
of when you anticipate submitting it.
If you don't have a date in mind,
you can put to be determined, that's totally fine.
You know, we're not gonna really go after you guys,
if you know, it's a month later to
or anything like that, just kind of keep us in the loop
of maybe why
a report hasn't been submitted yet,
and that it's, you know, still coming eventually.
And so,
and then that also brings us to
that's there's a list of reports on this page
of the agreement and you're essentially determining
what reports you're going to submit to us
based on site-specific information.
So kind of like before,
if you have groundwater contamination,
then we would expect to have groundwater monitoring reports
submitted at some sort of frequency.
So things like that, but again,
the obligant is just driving everything here.
Okay, so certificate of completion,
we will issue that once
all recognized environmental
conditions that are identified in the phase one
that are under the Railroad Commission's jurisdiction
have been assessed on the property
that once the Commission has kind of given you approval
that no further action is needed at the site,
based on that closure strategy that you chose.
And the restrictive covenant filed has been filed
with the County as needed.
So again, that's if you're going to have
an Institute, a permanent institutional control
breeder land use for groundwater or both as a site.
And then we have to have
the affidavit of completion submitted,
and then as well as that property needs
some balanced description.
Okay, and then, so your, a lot of people ask like
what does the certificate of completion look like?
But actually the certificate of completion
is one single document,
but you get this full package when you get it.
So you're going to get a cover letter
that we also kind of refer to
as the certificate of completion.
And that cover letter will detail the history of this site
and then all the environmental investigations
or mediations that have occurred.
And then you're going to get a certificate,
the actual certificate of completion document.
So that's going to encompass that release of liability
and I'll show you the language
around the next slide for that.
It's also, it's going to have a copy
of that property metes and bounds description
affidavit of completion,
and then a copy of the restrictive covenant.
And so with this certificate of completion package,
kind of the idea is that
it encompasses almost everything you need to know
about that site all in one.
And then if anyone, if that,
if people want to dive into more detail,
they can kind of go back and look at the reports.
But for the most part,
you can get almost all the information you need
from this certificate of completion package.
So here is a certificate of completion language.
Hopefully you can read it.
And I know that the font is a little bit small,
but the yellow highlighted portion of this
is really what I want you guys to focus on.
The reason why I'm putting it on here
is to kind of showing what the language
of that release of liability looks like.
So here it says the applicant is qualified
to obtain the protection from liability
provided by Chapter 91 Subchapter O,
Texas natural resources code.
So that is that language that
that is going to be that release of liability.
So oversight costs.
So again, as I told you,
this is a program you pay to be in.
As I mentioned, you have an application fee of $1,000
and that $1,000 is going to be credited to your account.
The oversight costs are $80 an hour.
And so we're going to begin drawing that against
the initial $1,000 until that is exhausted.
And so that amounts to about to 12.5 hours of oversight.
And so once we've exhausted that 12.5 hours of oversight,
and also exhausted that $1,000,
we will start invoicing you for any additional oversight
needed for the project until it's completed.
So I just want to kind of show you this on average
since we get a lot of questions about
how long does it take for a site to then
go through the program?
How much additional costs should, you know,
someone expect outside of the application in surcharge?
So typically, about 28 hours of oversight
is spent on each site.
Sites are enrolled in the program for about three years
and then typically applicants pay an additional $1,300
on oversight costs.
And I also just want to point out,
cause this might seem like an extreme,
we have one site that has been in our program for 14 years.
I think that is definitely it's an outlier
that site has exchanged property owners numerous times.
And when that happens, kind of slows down the process,
you know, the new property owner
has to kind of get up to speed.
They might want a new environmental firm
to come in and do the work.
So a lot of things,
so kind of changing property owners during the process
can definitely slow it down.
And that's sort of what's occurred at this site.
Okay, so we're gonna go through some examples
of some VCP sites
so you guys kind of get an idea of different scenarios
that you can have.
Okay, so this is a fairly recent,
I guess I'll call it graduate of the program.
So this is
so New Apartments in Houston.
So the property in the phase one,
they did not identify any actual oil and gas wells
on the property,
but there was a tank battery on the property
from 1983 to 1995.
So that required some investigation
and they did soil investigations
as well as installed some groundwater monitoring wells.
There was groundwater contamination out at the site.
I think there was either four or five
sampling events on the property.
And at that point, after the last sampling of it,
it was determined groundwater conditions
were stable and declining.
So based on that, the Railroad Commission approved
of placing restrictive covenant on the property.
And so that was done and they were issued
a certificate of completion.
This site was only on the voluntary cleanup program
for 12 months.
And I think it's important to note for this
that there was a lot of work that was done up front
before they actually submitted the application.
So the phase one, phase two,
I think even a limited site investigation
and a groundwater monitoring report
were all generated and submitted with the application.
So we had all of that to sort of work off of
as soon as they entered the program.
So another really interesting example is the
Walmart in Kilgore.
So this one I think is really interesting
because Walmart actually worked
with a previous oil and gas operator of this site
to plug the eight wells.
They were actually, they were shut in wells
or somewhat abandoned,
but Walmart actually had them come out, plug the wells
and I believe that the operators actually could pay
for the plugging operations as well.
And so that took care of
that kind of immediate risk.
And then they ended up doing some soil sampling
around the tank battery,
and in that tank battery there was some TPH content
or petroleum contaminated soils.
And so they ended up excavating that area.
And this site within our program for close to three years,
between 2002 and 2005.
So here we have on the left,
an image of that tank battery
that had some soil contamination around it.
And then on the right, we have a view,
this is from the soon-to-be
or what now what now is the Walmart parking lot.
And we have that drill rig
out there plugging one of the wells on the property.
So this one I really wanted it around here
because we seem to be getting more and more of these sites.
And I really want to highlight that
this is definitely a possibility
especially for any operators
who might be listening in right now.
So this is a site, it's an oil and gas lease.
And 11 tanks were struck by lightning.
This is pretty recently,
I think it was within the past year,
and these tanks released an unknown amount of product
and the operator at the time of the lightning strike
would have needed to do all of the response options
for the Railway Commission's rules
actually ended up selling that lease to another operator.
And because that new operator was not the operator
of the timing of the lightning strike,
they did not cause or contribute
to any contamination at the site.
They were actually able to enter
the voluntary cleanup program.
And when this happens,
when we have an operator taking over a lease that
has or has the potential to have contamination,
it's really important as the new operator
to get that phase one for the entire property
before you start any operations.
So then you can clearly define
what contamination might be at the property
before you started your operations
so that you can very easily get that release of liability.
And so work at this site is ongoing,
but the applicant, again, that current operator,
they're gonna receive a release of liability from the state
for this release.
But I think it's really important to note also
for this site that the
operator, the current operator who's in VCP,
if in the future after they've successfully
completed this program,
if they have any subsequent releases
after they've completed our program,
they're not eligible for VCP.
Then they would have to go into the operator cleanup program
at that point because they would be a responsible party.
Okay, so dual enrollment and VCP and OCP.
So OCP is our operator cleanup program.
So this is a really good example of that.
I believe it was in 2013,
a 16-inch transmission pipeline released 700 barrels
of crude into the Vince Bayou.
I think this is in Pasadena, Texas.
So Shell pipeline,
it was the operator of that transmission pipeline.
And they performed all of the immediate response actions
and all of the cleanup and investigation work.
And they immediately entered the operator cleanup program,
but CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric
was the property owner of
that right of way.
And so as the property owner,
they entered the voluntary cleanup program.
So the operator, Shell pipeline,
they're actually the ones performing all the investigation
or remediation work under OCP.
But once this is all completed
since CenterPoint is also in VCP,
they're going to receive a release of liability.
So CenterPoint receives a release of liability
and then Shell will receive
a no further action letter through OCP.
So that can happen where, you know,
if you can, as a property owner,
have leveraged that there is an operator
on your property and they have a release
and they entered the operator cleanup program,
you can also request that they enter you
as the property owner into VCP,
and then you can kind of work out amongst yourselves,
how to pay for that and everything.
But then you as a property owner
will get a release of liability at the end.
So that can also be really powerful
to kind of maybe help restore
your property after that occurs
not only from a contamination standpoint,
but from kind of a real estate standpoint.
Okay, so that's sort of, well,
we have to discuss about the voluntary cleanup program.
And so I kind of want to change gears a bit
and dive a little bit deeper
into some of the stuff we talked about yesterday,
which was funding available
to the state managed cleanup program
and the state funded cleanup program.
And these are funds available to the Brownfields program.
Okay, so a little bit of history,
the oil field cleanup fund,
which was referred to as OCU was created in 1991
through Senate bill 1103.
And the idea of this fund was
to basically finance plugging orphaned wells in Texas,
as well as clean up abandoned oil and gas sites.
So when it was created,
there was a 10 million unbalanced cap
from Railroad Commission penalties, fines, production fees,
and application fees that we place on operators.
And so that was a huge success when it first started.
And so the Commission started looking at ways
to add this to its fund.
And then in 2001 was Senate bill 310,
the Commission created universal bonding of operators
and then some oil and gas production fees increased.
So that fund balance
cap for OFC U increased from $10 million to $20 million.
Okay.
And so then some other changes occurred in 2011 and 2013.
The oil spill cleanup fund became the oil and gas regulation
and cleanup fund.
And so got a name change
and that fund balance cap increased
from 29 million to 30 million.
Thanks to the introduction oF surcharges
to various fees within the Commission,
such as billing permit fees that boost the application fee.
And then also by, and I think that was in 2013,
the groundwater advisory unit moved
from the Texas Commission on environmental quality
to the Railroad Commission.
And we started issuing groundwater determination letters,
which also have a fee.
Okay.
So we're kind of going to go through
what exactly these programs do.
And then afterwards,
we'll kind of talk about how they're required
to fund these brownfield sites.
So these funds are used to assess
and remediate contaminated sites.
So, and these are contaminated sites
under the Railroad Commission's jurisdiction.
So that's kind of a lot of different sites,
but it includes so P-4 leases, disposal facilities,
tank batteries, well heads,
just, you know, several other things.
And
the point of the program
is to inform environmental investigations
of these facilities
by using professional services such as, you know,
doing geologic assessments, water well samplings,
then brownfield site assessments,
remediation system designs.
So the main point is to perform these
environmental investigations to hopefully,
you know, to address these sites
that have some sort of potential contamination
associated with them.
So these funds can be used when the responsible operator
is unknown or cannot be found.
So that's what we're kind of defining as abandoned.
But these ones are also kind of used
in emergency situations sometimes,
or when an operator fails
or refuses to take any action.
So a lot of times we might have an operator
is for a long time and actively engaged
in operator cleanup program.
But at some point, you know,
they refuse to continue in the program.
And in that case,
the state managed cleanup program will step in.
However, when doing that,
we are able to seek reimbursement from that operator.
So the state funded plugging program.
So these funds are used for pollution abatement
or well plugging.
So this is going to be when we have a well that's abandoned
or what we refer to as orphaned
by say, a delinquent operator.
If we find a well in the field
that has never been identified, might not be mapped,
we have no idea who owns it.
So we would use state managed plugging funds for that,
and then also for when a well is actively leaking
or likely to leak.
And that leak is serious enough to threat,
to have a threat of pollution or injury to public health,
that responsible operator is unknown or cannot be found,
or that operator again is failing
or refusing to take action.
So a really important note here is that the,
these funds are not available
to VCP applicants.
However,
if you are a VCP applicant and decide to withdraw
from the program or terminate your agreement,
we may end up using these funds
to complete any needed cleanup
if we can not identify a responsible party.
Now, on the other hand, if you're a VCP applicant,
you withdraw or terminate your agreement,
which you're allowed to do
because it is a voluntary cleanup program.
And let's say we can find the responsible party
and you maybe you as an applicant
knew the responsible party but just decided
to take it on on your own,
we would probably reach out to that operator
to then take over kind of where the applicant left off
and enroll in the operator cleanup program.
So some examples of some sites that have been used for,
or that have used all three funding sources,
some of them we talked about yesterday,
but there's a couple of new ones in here.
Okay, so the city of Andrews Bird Viewing Park.
For anyone who didn't listen in yesterday,
this is kind of in the West to the city of Midland.
But this site was in our program
and the Brownfields program from 2004 to 2006.
And we used about $30,000 of Brownfields funds
to do assessment and cleanup work.
And then we also used about $75,000
of our state managed cleanup funds
to do the cleanup at this site.
And Art can correct me if I'm wrong once we get to the end,
but the Brownfields funds in this case,
were used mostly for the assessment.
And then the actual all the cleanup work we did
at this site was paid for by state managed.
And there was a salt water disposal pit in the
at the site with some product in it,
as well as five leaking wooden tanks.
So that helped kind of that state managed funds
helped the disposal of any product
and the tanks and the salt water disposal pit,
and all that well excavation that was required.
So another example which we kind of touched on yesterday
is the Neuces County Water quality improvement project.
So between 2015 and today,
so the site is still enrolled in our Brownfields program.
We've used almost $100,000 of Brownfields funds
and we've used almost $10,000 of our state managed funds
at this site.
Okay.
And then, so Turtle Bayou Nature Preserve,
though this site is also still enrolled,
but between 2010 and current,
the brownfield funds have,
we've spent about a little over $190,000
of Brownfields funds for both assessments and cleanups.
The state managed group has also contributed
about $50,000 for this site
when there was times where the Brownfields funds
couldn't cover it.
And then the state funded plugging program
has spent almost $500,000
at this site because there are about eight abandoned,
there's a total of eight abandoned oil and gas wells
that we see on the left hand in the top,
there's a picture of one of the wellheads that's abandoned.
We have that almost $500,000 was used to plug.
Six of the eight will still wait in line.
Two more of the wells to be plugged at this site.
But again, all of that's going to be paid for
out of state funded plugging,
which is also a great
fund to have available because many of these,
if we didn't have that available and the applicant
would have to pay for that,
we would have so many sites that we just aren't able
to take on or remediate and bring back to sort of life
because of that.
So the state funded plugging funds is a,
it's a really great funding source,
and we can really tackle some of these sites where,
you know, it might cost a lot to deal with
the hazards associated with it.
And so our last example is going to be
the Jones State forest.
So this site was enrolled in the Brownfields program
between 2006 and 2009.
And we used almost $150,000 of Brownfields funds
to do the assessments and cleanups,
and then state managed also stepped in
with almost $12,000 of funds
as well to do some more cleanup work.
And then I believe there were, there was one
abandoned well at this site.
And so the state funded plugging program was able to,
we were able to tap into about $50,000
to close that well as well.
So again, all of these resources
are available to Brownfield's applicants
and they can really
help us as in the Brownfields
to take on even bigger sites.
And that had a lot of potential costs associated with them.
All right.
So based on that, we're going to open it up to questions.
And so
let me real quick, I need to take a second to,
since Peter's not able to join us today,
pull up the email on...
Let's see what kind of questions we have.
All right, let's see.
So it currently looks like we do not have any questions.
I'd just like to open it up to Keith and Art
to see if you guys would like to add anything else
to this presentation.
Anything you can add about your two different programs
that maybe we didn't cover.
Art: Yeah, this is Art, no,
you did a very good job of
presenting the state managed plugging program anyway.
But if anybody has questions about the program,
feel free to call me or send me an email or,
or respond to this webinar.
Thank you.
-: Yeah, thank you Art.
Yeah if anyone,
well, Keith, do you want to say anything additional?
Keith: Yeah, I was just going to add real quick.
You don't get calls about wells on their property
and trying to get unplugged.
So
we have like a ranking system on how we plug these wells
based on like the risks,
you know, if we think they're going to leak
or if they seem like they're pretty safe for now,
we'll kind of hold off on them.
The reason being is we have a population
of like over 6,000 orphan wells.
So we have to, you know,
prioritize which ones we want to go after.
We can't just plug every single well, you know,
today you have to kind of plan them out so.
And then if you have a leaking well on your property
or something that's, you're concerned with,
you can always call your district office
and have it inspected and see if that's something
state managed plugging can help with.
Yeah, that's all I want to add.
Leslie: Awesome, yeah, I think Keith that you bring up
a really good point about
sort of, kind of a priority list of these wells
that need to be unplugged.
So the state managed group, as well as kind of Brownfields,
we have sort of a priority list of sites
that we need to get to.
Currently at Brownfields we do have a little bit
of a backlog that we're catching up with
and taking care of those sites.
We are still accepting applicants,
but for state managed Art you can elaborate more,
there is a priority list.
And each year we kind of look through that priority list
and find the sites that we need to address
with the money that we currently are allotted.
And that's kind of based on, you know, risk to human health,
risks to environment,
as well as some other factors.
Do you want to elaborate on that a little bit more Art?
Art: Sure.
So we do have a ranking system as well,
and we rank our sites A, B and C.
We, once we identify a site that's going to become
a candidate,
we go on and do
an internal assessment and we determine, you know,
the ranking at that point,
we typically address A and B sites.
If there's a seaside nearby and they're in or near B,
we'll clean that up as well while we're there,
save some over demo cost.
Otherwise, I think if I have other
other comments from you Leslie, I can answer them.
Leslie: Okay, awesome.
Well, I think that's pretty much everything.
I'm sure there's probably a little bit,
there's, I definitely think there's more questions
for VCP that people might think of
after they've watched the video or webinar,
but feel free to reach out to any of us
as you're watching or any questions you have about VCP.
Feel free to reach out about operator cleanup if you'd like,
or state managed or state managed plugging.
You have our contact information here right down.
I'd also like to point out that right now,
I believe this is same for Art and maybe Keith,
but my phone number listed here, you can still call that.
I can answer that and it goes we're telecommuting right now,
but all of my phone calls are sent through my laptop.
So feel free to call me that number still works
or just email me whichever you prefer.
And I think with that,
we will go ahead and close it out a little bit early.
And again, I just want to thank everyone
for joining us today and thank you for everyone
who made this webinar possible
and to all of our panelists for joining.
Keith: Thanks everybody, have a good afternoon.