MIDLAND An East Texas holding company’s proposed nine-story-tall oilfield waste repository 20 miles north of Midland has prompted a lawsuit filed by nearby property owners that is scheduled to be heard in a Travis County court.
A lawsuit spokesman claims that the repository, dug 30 feet into the ground just above the south end of the massive Ogallala Aquifer, would probably end up polluting the water.
Styled Kelton et al vs. the Texas Railroad Commission, the suit has been combined with one filed by Mabee Ranch Royalty Partnership President John W. Mabee, who lives just west of the project that’s planned by the High Roller Group of Center in far East Texas near Louisiana.
The case is on the docket of 53rd Civil District Court Judge Maria Cantu Hexsel in Austin.
The lawsuit spokesman says $100,000 was given to Texas Railroad Commission Chairman Wayne Christian just after the commission voted 2-1 to approve the project on Dec. 8, 2020. The campaign contribution from HR Environmental of Center, Texas, was recorded on Dec. 11, 2020, by the Texas Ethics Commission in Austin.
Christian is a native of Center whose company, Wayne Christian Financial Services, is there.
Speaking on behalf of his family, Midland oil and gas attorney Robert W. “Bill” Kelton III said he was not accusing Christian of taking a bribe. “It’s legal to give campaign contributions, but it sure does cast a shadow on the integrity of the process when you do it like that,” Kelton said.
Filed by Austin attorneys Curran Walker and Olga Kobzar, the suit claims High Roller didn’t follow the correct legal procedures before asking the TRC for a ruling, specifically that not all the nearby property owners were notified. Efforts to reach High Roller CEO Dustin Bailey were unsuccessful.
“My cousin Eddie Frank Kelton called me from Greenville to say he had gotten a box of stuff from this company in Center and he wanted to know what it was about,” Kelton said. “I called the Railroad Commission and they said they were conducting a hearing on the project right then.
“I immediately faxed them a letter to protest in the fall of 2019 and they recessed the hearing. The case is likely to wind up in the 3rd Court of Appeals in Travis County and it may even be presented to the Texas Supreme Court.”
Kelton said a TRC trial examiner had recommended against the plan, citing environmental concerns, but the examiner was over-ridden by Christian and Ryan Sitton, who was succeeded a month later by Jim Wright. Commissioner Christi Craddick voted “no.”
Efforts on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to get comments from Christian and Craddick were unsuccessful.
With Mabee, Eddie Frank Kelton and Robert Gray having been the only property owners who were notified, Bill Kelton said, the other owners now represented by the suit are his father Robert William Kelton Jr. of Atlanta, Texas, his cousins Mary Louise Rogers of Sabinal and Betty Ann Kelton Howell of Longview, the estates of his late uncles Elmer, Myrle and Eugene, the estate of the late Claude Denton, Midland attorney Jeff Johnston and Midland accountant Martin Miller.
Kelton said that if the project is finally approved, High Roller “will almost certainly flip it” and sell it to an operator.
He said the project is engineered for a location where there is no groundwater, but High Roller wants it erected at a convenient place for oilfield trucks hauling waste like sludge from drilling pits. The repository would be built just west of the Well Water Solutions Permian Martin No. 2 Salt Water Disposal Well at 3201 State Highway 349, so called because it is in Martin County.
