MY LETTER TO THE EDITOR ABOUT THE EFFECT OF GAS STORAGE DOME ON KISD STADIUM PLACEMENT:

Mary McGarr

April 27, 2016 at 3:50 pm

The second stadium should have been built on the KISD property that fronts the Grand Parkway and which was part of the original purchase of land for Cinco Ranch High School and Cinco Ranch Junior High in 1996. The School Board was too cheap to pay for the bridge across the bayou so that the land could be used for a stadium or some other school district purpose. There was plenty of room and parking spaces could have been shared with those schools.

The School Board has now allowed adjacent subdivisions to make that school land into a park. I suppose that’s better than letting land they couldn’t sell to anyone else just sit there. Parks built in Texas are open to the public.

The School Board didn’t use the land they bought next Tompkins High School for the planned second stadium for one big reason, in my opinion, and that is that the land is awfully close to the nine (or perhaps ten) injection well heads for the Western Gas storage facility where methane gas is stored.

Many Katy citizens don’t realize that the well heads are near them or that they live over an underground space filled with methane gas. A lot of Houstonians also live over filled underground cavities that were formerly gas or oil fields, and usually they are pretty safe. It’s just a matter of preference whether you do or not–but it’s nice to know about it before you choose.

Here are the notes I made the night the School Board discussed whether or not the Katy ISD School Board was going to approve the placement of this site so close to the land KISD had purchased long ago for a high school. Western Gas didn’t need our approval, but it is of note that the Fort Bend Commissioners Court and the Katy City Council voted not to support its placement in the midst of the Katy area:

QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS I WROTE DOWN AND ASKED WHEN WESTERN GAS CAME TO THE KATY ISD SCHOOL BOARD MEETING TO TALK TO THE BOARD

1. Board Member Jim WIliams was not opposed to the placement of the injection well heads in the midst of Katy. (I thought that odd since he lived close by and I wanted to know why he was not opposed.)

2. Can you show me where it is indicated whether or not the Morris Cummins tract is included in the gas field. (Katy ISD had owned the “Morris Cummins Tract” for a long time with the intent of eventually building a high school there, and they subsequently bought additional adjacent land for the purpose of building a football stadium there. It was a very large tract of land that was already owned, and I did not want it compromised by having the well heads so close to a school to be built in the future. (Tompkins High School was eventually built on the Morris Cummis Tract.)

3. The Western Gas representative stated that there were 34 old wells on the property they had purchased for the proposed site. He also stated that the life of a casing in a well is 30 years. He did not mention, nor did he know about wells and well heads that might be on adjacent land and which could also be affected.

4. Did Katy ISD send a representative to the RRC meetings?

5. I asked about the impact on the Cinco Ranch area which had not yet started to be developed.

6. I asked about the value of the Morris Cummins tract.

7. I asked who all the “players” were.

8. I asked if KISD administrators had established a contact with Western Gas.

9. I asked who was in opposition to the proposal.

10. I asked about the tax benefits to the school district.

11. I asked about the allusion to “allegations of intent to deceive” which was mentioned in the information packet by the Hillebrenner Protestors.

12. I asked when we would know the results of an “environmentally oriented” geologist who was supposed to review the reservoir boundaries and question the integrity of the upthrust fault that forms the entire northeastern reservoir boundary. (I live to the northeast of the proposed field!)

13. The people who had signed over their rights before most of us knew about the project gave up their royalties–or at least that was what the Board members were led to believe, and I wanted to know why.

I can assure you that MY questions, asked in an Open Session, were better than the other ones that were asked.

In doing my due diligence, I also talked to Bill Bell who led the organized protesters.

I can also say that they DID build the well heads, and there is now a lot of methane gas stored under a big portion of the southwestern part of the Katy school district. The working well heads are located at the corner of Westheimer Parkway and Roesner Road.

Soon after the installation of the 9 well heads, one of the well heads blew out and killed a worker.

When I had asked at the board meeting what would happen if the thing blew up (a gas storage dome in Brenham had recently blown up), I was told by the Western Gas representative that if the district would build a “berm” on the side of the high school facing the well heads, the explosion would not affect the school.

Board Member Joe Adams was on the school board when we had that discussion. It is of note that the land for the football stadium next to Tompkins was purchased AFTER the well heads were in place, and Mr. Adams was a member of that board as well.

At the very least Mr. Adams should have made sure there was a berm installed when Tompkins High School was built.

The land next to Tompkins High School where the stadium was supposed to go was sold to a developer, and there are homes there now.

They probably need a berm too!  It's not too late to build one.