Developers of the Westwater Farms production water facility near Harley Dome have agreed they must comply with the Grand County land use code and obtain a permit from the county to proceed with construction and operations. After months of legal wrangling the company has agreed to submit an application for a conditional use permit.

Grand County Engineer Mark Wright told the Grand County Council on Tuesday that discussions between Grand County Attorney Happy Morgan and Westwater Farms attorneys led to the company’s decision to apply for the permit and comply with the land use code.

“I believe this issue will be shortly within resolution,” Wright said, adding that he expects an application within the month.

The issue, and the standoff between attorneys, resulted from the developer’s initial classification of the development as “agricultural,” which does not require a permit. After determining that the facility would process produced water from oil and gas wells, the county issued a cease-and-desist letter in July advising the developer to stop its work and apply for a permit.

The letter was essentially ignored and residents reported that construction activity was still taking place. Correspondence between Westwater Farms official Jeff Dyke and Clinton Dworshak, compliance officer with the state Division of Oil, Gas and Mining, indicates that Dyke believed no permits were necessary. Dworshak made it clear that a state permit is required.

At the end of October, Morgan submitted the county's comments to the state agency requesting that DOGM “withhold issuance of any permit" until Westwater Farms "complies with the county’s conditional use permit process.” The applicant, Morgan stated, “all along...has known that it would operate the facility with a principal use – that the applicant itself – describes [it] as ‘a facility that will process waters from the oil and gas industry’.”

According the application submitted by Westwater Farms to DOGM, production water will be processed in three stages: the pre-filter stage will remove large particles. Next, the water will be “polished” to remove traces of oil and grease. Then, reverse osmosis will reduce total dissolved solids to less than 500 mg per liter.

Wastes will be transported to another facility such as the production water disposal operation nearby at Danish Flat or to an injection well, according to the application. There is one injection well in Lisbon Valley and several operate in the Uinta Basin, according to Dworshak.

The application states that the resulting pure water could than be used for agriculture, but does not indicate what form that would take. The site, at Harley Dome, just north of I-70 a few miles from the Colorado border, is located on Mancos shale, a fine, non-porous soil.

Although there seems to be no dispute that the facility would receive production water, Wright said that the county’s new production water disposal ordinance would not apply to this development. He did not elaborate, but said that as the engineering and planning staff review the application they will apply the lessons learned while formulating the ordinance.