Drilling rig vexes school camp

SCOFIELD, Carbon County — Fifth-grade teacher David Cox likes to lead students in an exercise at Clear Creek Outdoor Education Camp during which they lie in the snow and try not to make a peep.

The goal is to experience total silence, absolute stillness. The students usually last about two minutes — forever for a preteen.

"It's something we can't get down in the valley," said Cox, who teaches at Lehi's Sego Lily Elementary.

Such quiet hasn't been experienced since October, when a contracted crew for Marion Energy Inc. started natural gas drilling on a rig a few hundred yards from the students' sleeping quarters at the camp.

In addition to noise, Cox, a former state lawmaker, said bright lights from the 24-hour drilling operation make star-gazing impossible. And sometimes the area around the drilling site smells strange.

But those aren't the only concerns. Camp staff question the safety of the 5,100 students a year who visit the overnight, year-around camp owned by the 56,000-student Alpine School District.

Answers to their questions about the safety thus far have been elusive, they say. And concerns were heightened when the state cited the company for environmental-regulation violations.

State regulators found a series of environmental violations at the site and scheduled a March 14 meeting in Price with district employees, energy company representatives, including Marion Energy consultant and former U.S. Rep. Jim Hansen.

But Michael Hebertson, manager of enforcement and hearings for the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining, said he cancelled the meeting because it was unnecessary.

"The company was more than willing to solve (issues raised by the violations) through the administrative process," Hebertson said.

Another meeting to discuss issues surrounding the drilling site is tentatively scheduled for today at the Salt Lake office of an attorney who represents Marion Energy.

An official from the energy company's Texas office did not return phone calls to the Deseret Morning News. The company's Salt Lake attorney also did not return a phone call to the newspaper.

"That (notice of violation) has nine specific issues under five different rules," said Jim Springer, spokesman for the oil, mining and gas division.

He said the violations ranged from failing to properly dispose of drilling clay to spilled trash and diesel outside the 2-acre drilling site.

"All of them were classified as pretty minor," Springer said, and not serious enough for a hearing before the state's Board of Oil, Gas and Mining, which can levy fines.

Most violations have been fixed — especially after Marion Energy replaced drilling equipment on Jan. 23 and the drill supervisors on March 8, Springer said.