DEADLINE TO OPPOSE LAKE SOMERVILLE LAND SALE NEARS
Residents of Lake Somerville have until Wednesday to protest the auction of land on the southern edge of Lake Somerville.
Five parcels will be up for an August competitive oil and gas lease auction by the Bureau of Land Management.
A similar 2017 auction was opposed by U.S. Congressman Michael McCaul and State Senator Lois W. Kolkhorst.
Numerous environmental groups and local residents also opposed the 2017 auction of land for use of directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing to extract oil and gas from beneath the lake.
The Brenham City Council also opposed the sale, saying a contamination would be disastrous because the lake is the sole source of water for the City of Brenham.
The Bureau later auctioned off the parcels of land after finding there would be no significant impact by allowing the sales to continue.
Stopping a few small BLM leases stops nothing. Remember the land that was stolen through eminent domain for the lake still has mineral rights owned by the original landowners. The watershed in that lake drains 15,000 producing oil wells and is in the middle of a billion barrel field. The lake mineral rights are privately owned property except for these few BLM leases. There are about 100 horizontal wells already on the lakeshore under the lake on both Corps of engineers land and private land. There has already been a well drilled on private land and private minerals this past year under the lake. There’s about 10,000 acres of owned and producing leases UNDER the lake already and the BLM leases are only a few hundred acres are BLM. Also, the specific Leases adjoining the BLM leases are minerals owned by African American families who will be thrown under the bus if someone wanted to drill their leases as they would need these BLM leases to do so. Abandoning modern techniques and new wells that arguably replaces many old, rusting, and sometimes leaking wells is not wise. Washington county schools and roads see millions of dollars of tax revenue from these wells and brenham benefits drastically. If you are worried about drinking oil and chemicals it is more than likely you’ve been doing so since the lake was built, natural seepage or otherwise. If it hasn’t been a problem yet it won’t be a problem especially now.
While protecting water is just, telling private citizens and owners what to do with their property is unjust. They owned that land before a lake was on top of it. If the city of brenham has a problem with property rights, maybe they should source their water elsewhere from land the city owns and not from a lake in the middle of an oil field.
City Council should do their job and guard our assets vs the citizens having to protest. How difficult can this be to to calculate the risk.
If the council members care this will not be considered any further. Wake up!!!
Perhaps the city should send an agent to attend the sale and try to acquire the leases at a reasonable price. Once the leases are in hand the city can just sit on them and no one will be able to drill those for the next 10 yrs. I don’t believe the leases were all that expensive during the last few sales and they certainly would be inexpensive at these oil and gas prices.
But then I’m just a dumb country bumpkin.
As someone who lives by two of the parcels to be offered my life and property will be affected. How can we protest? Please send links.
How does one submit a protest?
The simple solution to protect our vital water supply is for the city and county to purchase the leases. It is their duty to protect citizens. Certainly cheaper than building another water pipeline from an aquifer purchase. I encourage every citizen to protect our children, whose small bodies would suffer from consumption of theses poisonous fracking chemicals that will most certainly flow into Lake Somerville by contacting the mayor, council, county judge and commissioners.
How could this even be an option?
Every Brenham resident should be against this.
It is the source of water for Brenham.