Sunday, Nov. 08, 2009

Carlsbad prepares for damage from well collapse

Officials think salt cave may swallow part of road, city

CARLSBAD, N.M. -- The bright yellow signs on U.S. 285 are the first indication that things aren't right in Carlsbad.

"US 285 south subject to sinkhole 1,000 feet ahead," motorists are warned.

But there is little other evidence that in southeastern New Mexico's oil country, a giant cavern sits beneath the earth, ready to swallow part of the highway and possibly a church, several businesses and a trailer park.

The cavern was formed over three decades as oil field service companies pumped fresh water into a salt layer more than 400 feet below the surface and extracted several million barrels of brine to help with drilling. State regulators flagged it as a potential danger after concluding that it was similar to two wells northwest of Carlsbad that collapsed without warning last year.

Over the past few decades, communities in Texas, Kansas, Michigan, Canada and Europe learned of similar underground danger only after cracks appeared and the ground began to sink. Regulators are trying to determine how to prevent future collapses by better managing a practice that's used throughout the world.

Most brine wells operate far from homes and businesses, but Carlsbad's is unique because it is in a population center -- and could prove potentially disastrous.

"It would be a mess. It would be like a bomb going off in the middle of town," said Jim Griswold, a hydrologist with the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division.

The city council and the Eddy County Commission declared a state of emergency Thursday, the first step to free state and federal funds that could be used to figure out a way to stabilize the cavern.

"The public's been warned," Carlsbad Mayor Bob Forrest said. "We've had a heads up, and for us as elected officials to sit here and do nothing is political suicide. We want to move forward."

The city of about 26,000 residents knows caverns well. It is home to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, a network of some of the largest natural caverns in North America, where tourists can see both delicate calcite formations and towering stalagmites.

But this man-made salt cavern has residents nervous.

Officials have set up a monitoring system that takes readings from tilt meters and pressure sensors every two seconds and averages them to determine whether there are changes drastic enough to trigger alarms. The alarms are expected to give authorities several hours to evacuate people in advance of a cave-in that could span anywhere from 200 to 500 feet, Griswold said.