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The
Manual has options for temporary and permanent seeding along
with the requirement that after any work on the site/road
that it be reseeded.
The
purposes of seeding with grass are severalfold. Grass, when
fully grown, will help prevent erosion and stabilize the soils,
especially on slopes. Grass also acts as a sediment filter.
And, finally, grass has an esthetic appeal.
The
downsides to grass are many, especially the tall fescue variety
favored in this state. Grass inhibits the growth of other
species of vegetation so that once a site is seeded for grass,
it will tend to stay grass-covered for years, even in a woodland
surrounding. Tall fescue is susceptible to a fungus that is
harmful to ruminants -- such as cattle and deer. It can kill
horses if they eat it.
Another
problem with tall fescue is that, unless it is mowed periodically,
it tends to form clumps with bare soil in between. The reason
companies favor grass is because they consider it low or no
maintenance. It doesn't get mowed.
There
are other options to tall fescue favored by the Manual. The
state's Division of Natural Resources has a regulation requiring
that gas and oil drillers in state forests have to use native
species. That regulation is 58CSR35,
Rules
and Conditions Upon Which Oil and Gas Operators May Access
State Forests, and
it includes two seeding schedules along with temporary seeding
schedules.
The
state also has a publication (Managing
Gas and Oil Sites for Wildlife) that supports plantings
beneficial to wildlife and its use is encouraged by the Manual.
Plantings include bushes and trees along the edges of the
site. For our site we're considering red maple, yellow poplar,
sumac, elderberry and dogwood which we have in border areas
in our woods.
In
our examination of well sites, we didn't see deliberate use
of plantings for wildlife. Most recent sites (those completed
in the past 20 years or so) are bare of any vegetation other
than grass. Some older sites, especially those where less
area had to be cleared, were naturally reverting to forest.
These are sites drilled in the 1940s and 1950s.
A
few sites, including some drilled in the 1960s, are barely
vegetated. We know that the well closest to us, 47-039-02026,
the pad is lower than the surrounding terrain (from repeated
grading over the years) so that it becomes a bog during the
winter. Too much moisture inhibits the growth of vegetation,
just as much as too little.
An
additional problem we saw at all but the oldest sites was
the compacting of soil because of the heavy equipment used
to create the site and used for drilling (drill rigs can weigh
as much as 60 tons). Sites with compacted soils had little
growth on the pad, especially where vehicles repeatedly drove.
We
visited one site that had recently been seeded and wrote a
blog entry on it. We reproduce that entry on bulldozer
tracking here.
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