Fish poop could spread drilling wealth

By Becky Bohrer

updated 9:09 a.m. ET June 6, 2005

SHERIDAN, Wyo. - Ever since developers learned how to tap coal seams in the Powder River Basin for natural gas, they’ve struggled with what to do with the brackish groundwater that comes out first. A fish may be the answer.

Water is being pumped from coal-bed methane wells in rural, northern Wyoming to John Woiwode’s tilapia farm in an area where cattle roam. About 1,300 of the small, pink fish now delight in the water — flipping, flopping and pooping in it.

It’s the squiggles of poop that interest researchers like Woiwode, and whether that waste could help make the water into a more usable asset instead of a pollutant.

“The implications are profound,” said Woiwode, who’s spent the past several years studying the role fish could play in alternate uses for methane waste water. “If there’s a potential to get this whole discharge issue shifted from being an industrial pollutant to an agricultural application, this is very significant.”

Poop promotion
Previous research found that using fish manure on crops irrigated with methane waste water could promote plant growth, accelerate the rate at which salt-tolerant plants take up salts and help keep soils from being gummed up by harmful levels of sodium. But if water not used by the plants can seep down below the root zone, and carry the sodium with it, the topsoil is not harmed. Tests using fish manure show that it has exactly that effect.

“Once it’s past the root zone, you have productive soil that can be sustainable for an indefinite period of time,” Woiwode said.

Becky Bohrer / AP Researcher John Woiwode shows where plots will be planted with fish manure and coal-bed methane waste water.

Woiwode plans to expand that effort to the field beginning this summer. Researchers plan to plant eight varieties of plants, some salt-loving species, others not, to see if the results can be replicated in the region’s heavy, clay soils. A range of water treatments, including spring water and raw methane waste water, will also be applied.

“We would hope this would be a win-win-win for all parties,” Woiwode said.

One of the biggest issues surrounding coal-bed methane development — and hindering it, in some cases — is what to do with all the water. To tap coal-bed methane, large amounts of groundwater must be pumped out to ease the pressure holding the natural gas in coal seams. Depending on the area from which it comes, the water can be salty, and if not treated or monitored closely, the water could damage crops or soil, some experts and conservationists say.

Some companies are treating either the water or soil so farmers and ranchers in the basin can use it for irrigation. But that can be a very expensive option.

Larry Munn, a professor of soil science at the University of Wyoming, said there are no easy answers.

“Most of it is suitable for livestock, as drinking water, but the volume required for that is fairly small compared to the amount (being) produced,” he said.

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