UPDATED: Blackstone to host open house next week after incident at new lithium drilling site
The open house is next Wednesday, March 13 at 6 PM at City Hall.
This article was updated 3/14/24 to be more clear that the February public hearing was for a different Blackstone project. Although the original article is actually correct, the wording was updated for further clarity. This article was also updated 3/12/24 to reflect a location change for the “open house”.
A couple hours after this issue was mailed out, we received word that there was water gushing at the Blackstone Minerals lithium drilling site south of Elgin and just north of Brown’s Wash. A couple workers on site said that they apparently encountered an underground pocket of carbon dioxide, which forced water up that began accumulating on site. A couple hours after we left the site, Blackstone Minerals and A1 Lithium (both owned by Anson Resources) announced that they would be hosting an open house at the Blackstone drilling site City Hall next Wednesday, March 13th at 6 PM with pilot plant tours, a presentation, and a question-and-answer session. For more information you should email michaels@ansonresources.com.
When we arrived at the site today (Friday, March 8) around 5 PM, this water was diverted to a holding basin and collected and transported away for disposal, as shown in the second video below. As the water continued to accumulate, a backhoe was building up the protective berm between the edge of the drilling site and Brown’s Wash, as shown in the first video below.
Brown’s Wash leads to the Green River, so any potential overflow into the wash will likely reach the river, a concern voiced by Kelly Dunham and Diane Chandler at last month’s public hearing for Blackstone’s underground injection control permit (for a different Blackstone project). From what we could see and document of Brown’s Wash, we couldn’t determine if any of the water overflowed into it. There was water flowing from upstream of the drilling site, and the only anomaly we saw was a bubbling seep that smelled similiar to the water of Crystal Geyser. We aren’t sure if the drilling had anything to do with this bubbling, because the area does have some existing water seeps. The United States Department of Energy has studied it and monitors parts of this area due to its proximity to the “Black Pyramid” uranium tailings disposal cell and former Union Carbide uranium mill.
We at the Observer don’t have extensive backgrounds in geology nor do we have particularly nice cameras, but we documented what seemed significant with our phones, and hope to learn more at the open house ourselves!