By Terrence Henry, KUT News for StateImpact Texas
AUSTIN – This legislative session Lawmakers are considering various ways to manage the oil and gas drilling boom. From tax breaks to encouraging less water use to regulating eminent domain. At a conversation with some lawmakers hosted by StateImpact Texas Tuesday night, there was bipartisan agreement that something needs to be done about one issue in particular.
Fracking can get a lot of oil and gas out of the ground, but it’s a needy process. Each well can require as much as 5 million gallons of water to be drilled. That water is often brought to a well site with trucks. A lot of them. Republican State Representative Bill King represents part of the Barnett Shale Region.
BILL KING: “It has to be hauled in, and then it has to be hauled out….To move a full rig unit may take as many as forty trucks and almost then blacktop roads particularly county roads, but also the state highways, it’s tough.”
Road damage from drilling is estimated in South Texas to cost $2 billion. Democratic State Senator Carlos Uresti represents San Antonio and large parts of the Eagleford shale. He thinks a fix would include some state money.
CARLOS URESTI: “So what my bill would do: one-time funding of approximately $400 million to fix the county roads in those different counties.”
Senator Uresti says many of the county roads damaged by drilling trucks were built 40 or 50 years ago. They weren’t designed to carry 80,000-pound trucks. But Representative King said even with new funds, a fix isn’t easy. In the Barnett Shale area, a hotbed of drilling a few years ago, they suffered road damage repeatedly.
KING: “One of the problems you run into, is if you repair ’em, they just get torn up again. So there’s not an easy answer to it, the counties do need some funding…”
King also said that his area did have some luck getting drillers to help pay for damaged roads. As for Uresti’s plan to help out counties, it’s currently being considred by the Senate Finance Committee.
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