A Texas-based company has dropped its effort to build a controversial project on the Eastern Shore that would have drilled below the aquifer to store chicken waste.
Vaulted Deep withdrew a zoning request to build a deep injection well in Accomack County, two days after the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution opposing it.
Hundreds of residents along the Shore had been fighting the project for months, including formal opposition from adjoining Northampton County and the regional Ground Water Committee.
“I, in my career, have never seen a proposed use of property like this have just a 100% unified opposition from the public,” said Mike Mason, Accomack’s county administrator.
The community’s concerns centered around potential contamination to the Yorktown-Eastover aquifer system, which is the Shore’s sole source of drinking water. It’s shallower and smaller than the Potomac aquifer, which provides groundwater for most of coastal Virginia.
“There is zero risk tolerance in this area for anything that could potentially damage that aquifer,” Mason said.
Vaulted Deep states its mission is to reduce carbon and methane emissions from organic material, such as food waste, sewage and paper sludge, by sequestering it underground. It operates facilities in Los Angeles and Kansas.
The company can then sell carbon credits to companies, such as Microsoft, to help them meet “net-zero” emissions goals.
In Accomack, the company proposed to drill more than 5,000 feet next to an independent poultry facility in the Oak Hall area. The project would collect chicken litter from up to 100 poultry farms across the Delmarva Peninsula, “slurrify” it in a large mixer and pump about 150,000 tons underground each year through pipes cased in cement.
Last year, officials informed Vaulted Deep that the county’s current zoning rules would not allow deep injection wells. The company appealed to the County Board of Zoning Appeals and was scheduled for a hearing in March before reversing course.
In an email Wednesday, a Vaulted Deep spokesperson confirmed the company is “not moving forward with the potential project,” but did not explain why.
Steve Lawson, who’s lived on the Shore for three decades, worked in the oil business in Alaska and was often around drill sites. When he learned of the proposal, he dove into research about how it could affect the area.
The debate hinged on geology. Vaulted Deep stated the aquifer would be separated from the injection by thick, confining layers of rock.
“They have asserted that there is a rock barrier, which would stop any upward migration of this material, which is basically fecal matter, and it's full of all sorts of nasty stuff,” Lawson said. But “none of us here have been able to find” any evidence to support that.
Opponents also reached out to the U.S. Geological Survey, which confirmed it had no record of a rock barrier.
The Environmental Protection Agency regulates deep injection wells through the Underground Injection Control program. The state does not have additional oversight.
But the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality raised concerns about the project last year in a letter to the EPA. Department officials wrote that more exploratory drilling would be needed to confirm the site could sustain the proposed pumping without fracturing, and that the material could contain contaminants exceeding regulatory limits.
Del. Rob Bloxom, R-Accomack, is pursuing legislation to ban such “bioslurry injection wells” statewide in areas with protected groundwater.
“It was too much of a risk, you know, no way to cure it if something went wrong,” Bloxom said. “So I just wanted to be double sure that it wouldn't happen.”
Bloxom said chicken manure, which contains nitrogen, is also a valuable resource for local farmers.
Andy Teeling, who lives in Accomack County, was happy to hear of Vaulted Deep’s withdrawal. He’d been concerned the project could change life on the Shore for generations.
“It might not happen right away when they drill it, but it's going to get itself into the aquifer eventually,” Teeling said. “So we are looking out for the future.”
