Westwater Farms, a facility proposed for the disposal of water produced from oil and gas wells, is inching closer to approval from the Grand County Planning and Zoning Commission, according to Grand County Engineer Mark Wright.

The commission will resume consideration of the Westwater Farms application at its next meeting on Oct. 14.

Wright and six members of the commission toured the site, located just north of I-70 at the Harley Dome exit about five miles from the Colorado border and a similar distance from the Colorado River, last week. The facility is intended to be smaller than the existing Danish Flats facility a few miles to the west, according to information submitted to the planning commission.

Environmental organizations have voiced opposition to the facility, based mainly on fears that saline water injected into the Entrada formation beneath Harley Dome will find its way to the river to the detriment of downstream water users.

But concerns that the saline water will contaminate the Moab and Spanish Valley water source seem mainly put to rest by a report from Dr. Wayne Downs, of Horrocks Engineers.

Instead of evaporating the water as at Danish Flats, Westwater Farms will treat a portion of it for agricultural use, and inject the remainder into the ground. At both facilities, volatile organic compounds and excessive dissolved solids must be removed from the produced water before it is either evaporated or injected into the ground, according to state and county officials.

Planning commission members said they are constrained from offering opinions outside of official meetings, but it appears the commissioners were mostly satisfied, after visiting the site, by assurances made by Westwater Farms officials that no environmental harm will occur.

“I do not see an engineering reason at this point, given the information we have at this point, that would preclude the issuance of a conditional use permit for this facility,” Wright said.

The final piece of missing information will come from a borehole now being drilled at the site under a permit from the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining. Once that hole is complete Westwater Farms will report its findings about the quality of water to the division.

The report prepared by Downs suggests, on the basis of records from wells drilled near Harley Dome, that the facility may not be allowed to inject waste water into the Entrada sandstone formation because the water contained in that rock layer may be pure enough to be classified as drinking water.

If DOGM makes that finding based on the borehole test, the report suggests, and Wright confirmed, Westwater Farms will likely be restricted to injecting its waste water only into the Wingate formation, which lies beneath the Entrada rock layer.

The Kayenta formation, which is located between the Entrada and the Wingate, has “relatively low permeability and generally acts as a barrier to water movement. It is expected to act as an intermediate confining zone between the [Entrada and the Wingate],” Downs’ report states.

In other words, wastewater injected into the Wingate is prevented by the Kayenta formation from migrating upward to the Entrada formation.

Downs also reported that the relatively clean water in the Entrada finds its way to the Colorado River via a spring in Ruby Canyon about 5 or 6 miles southeast of Harley Dome, just east of the Colorado border.

That possibility alarms officials of Living Rivers, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Grand Canyon Trust. They wrote in a letter to DOGM that the Colorado River is managed for the benefit of 30 million people and the recovery of endangered and threatened species.

“The source of of this discharge [from the Entrada] is unknown. The potential risk to this vital source of water in arid lands is too great, and for this reason we strongly suggest that this permit be denied,” the letter states. It also calls for an assessment of cumulative impacts from all the state and federal agencies involved with the river.

Wright confirmed there is a hanging garden at the site of the spring on the river. He said that if any saline water from Westwater Farms made its way to the river its effect on the flora in the hanging garden would be immediately obvious and Westwater Farms could be shut down.

The elevation of the surface at Harley Dome is 4,853 feet. The river at the state line it is at 4,643 feet, according to the Bureau of Land Management’s metric topographic map. The Westwater Farms application calls for injecting wastewater between 877 and 1,667 feet below ground level, which means below river level.

Unless the wastewater is injected into the Wingate formation at pressures great enough to fracture the rock, Downs concludes that it will not migrate up into the Entrada formation.

Wright said a conditional use permit issued by the county will likely contain a requirement that the water not be pressurized in order to prevent fracturing.