BuRec mulls new earthquake activity in future salt injection well review | Western Colorado

The recent seismic activity in the Paradox Valley area will be part of the reclamation office’s calculations because it takes into account what the future holds for operations in the brine injection well there, having decided recently that the desalination effort in the valley may end when the well is unable to reuse.

Agency spokeswoman Justin Lev said that two earthquakes early Saturday evening, one of them rated by the Reclamation Bureau of 3.6 magnitude, were believed to be aftershocks of a 4.4-magnitude earthquake in March 2019. The 2019 earthquake was felt as far away as Grand Junction and Moab, the largest in Saturday’s earthquake zone since 1962, according to a press release from the University of Utah seismographs. The university says the largest earthquakes on Saturday, with the epicenter 3.5 miles southwest of Bedrock, were felt by Moab.

While the University of Utah and the US Geological Survey assessed the second and largest earthquakes that occurred on Saturday with a magnitude of 4.3, University of Utah seismologist Jim Beckman said that there are different methods of measuring earthquake strength and that the method of measuring the Reclamation Bureau is more stringent and perhaps better describes the size of the largest earthquake. Saturday.

The agency’s Paradox Valley project is designed to reduce salinity in the Colorado River Basin by injecting salt water into a deep underground well. The Reclamation Office said only this month that the salinity control program in the Paradox Valley at the western end of Montrose County will end once it becomes no longer possible to continue operating the injection well, unless a suitable alternative is identified in the future.

So far, the operations in the well and its future have been suspended in the air due to the increase in the amount of seismic activity that it has caused in recent years with the increase in pressure in the subterranean formation as the brine is injected. The Reclamation Office has only operated the well since the 2019 earthquake during a test period for part of this year, and is evaluating test results because it takes into account what the future holds for any other operations in the well.

Lev said the earthquakes on Saturday “are consistent with previously induced seismic activity in the area from the Paradox injection well.”

She said that these aftershocks will be considered as part of the Reclamation Office’s review of the data to “see appropriate next steps for the facility,” after which the media and the public will be notified of what it has learned.

Recent earthquake activity in the Paradox Valley region includes not only Saturday’s earthquakes but many other large earthquakes in recent months. There have now been five earthquakes of magnitude 3 or more in magnitude (which the University of Utah measures earthquakes) dating back to September 16 miles from the epicenter of the largest earthquake on Saturday, according to the university. These include a 3.4-magnitude earthquake on September 16, a 3.8-magnitude earthquake on November 8, and a 3.7-magnitude earthquake on December 8. The university also ranked the smallest earthquakes on Saturday at 3.3 on the Richter scale.

A total of 14 earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or more have occurred in that region since 1997, so five of them have occurred in the last four months of this year, Beekman said. “It is clear that the rate has increased recently.”

The Reclamation Office’s Paradox project is the largest in the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control program, which seeks to reduce salt in the river due to its effects on things like agriculture and municipal water supplies in the downstream states and Mexico. For many years, the injection well alone has been used to remove more than 100,000 tons per year of salt from the river, with the entire program currently removing about 1.22 million tons per year. The well is used to drain the brine groundwater in the Paradox Valley to prevent it from reaching the Dolores River, a tributary of the Colorado River.

The agency recently completed an environmental review of three alternatives to the existing salinity control well. This included operating a new well in one of two new locations, using evaporation ponds, or building a factory that would heat the brine until it crystallized and removed the salt. But the agency has not found any of them possible at this time due to concerns such as the suitability of the proposed new well sites, the potential impacts on wildlife and aesthetics associated with the ponds, the costs and energy requirements associated with the plant, and the need to dispose of salt from a plant or pond to a landfill.

It is not unusual, Beckmann said, for aftershocks of large earthquakes to last for years. He said that rock masses on either side of an underground fault could continue to adapt because the slip that caused the initial large earthquake may not be uniform when a fault occurs. But he said the March 2019 earthquake was not that large, and in Utah, earthquakes of this magnitude do not usually have aftershocks that last for the better part of two years. Beekman said earthquakes in the Paradox Valley don’t necessarily behave like normal and natural earthquakes since they are caused by injections.

The reclamation office said that minor property damage resulted from several small earthquakes that were mostly caused by desalination over decades. Beekman noted that not many people live in and around Paradox Valley.

“There might be buildings at risk, but from a seismic hazard point of view, it is good that there is no dense population of people there,” he said.

He said there could be concern among residents in Bedrock about potential harm in the event of a larger earthquake, and such an earthquake could cause damage in communities like La Salle across the Utah border.

He said, “But I also think that the Reclamation Office, they are concerned about it and maybe they will do what they can to mitigate the earthquakes.”

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