NM Wants Company to Take Responsibility for Cavern

The state of New Mexico has spent more than a half-million dollars investigating and monitoring a giant cavern a few hundred feet beneath the ground in southeastern New Mexico.

This undated image provided by the National Cave and Karst Research Institute shows a collapsed...

This undated image provided by the National Cave and Karst Research Institute shows a collapsed brine well near Artesia, N.M. State officials say a brine well in Carlsbad, N.M., has similar characteristics to this well that collapsed in July 2008. The state of New Mexico has spent more than a half-million dollars investigating and monitoring a giant cavern a few hundred feet beneath the ground in southeastern New Mexico and now it wants the company responsible for the property to pay up. (AP Photo/Courtesy of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute) NO SALES

(AP)

Now, it wants the company responsible for the property to pay up.

The state Oil Conservation Division has installed an elaborate monitoring system of tilt meters and pressure sensors at the site in Carlsbad, hoping to detect the earliest signs of a cave-in that could possibly take with it part of a highway, a church, a trailer park, businesses and a major irrigation canal.

The Associated Press obtained a letter that the agency sent to trucking company I&W Inc. on Friday. It demands reimbursement of $563,420, as well as reports that the agency claims the company failed to submit as part of its discharge permit.

The reports would have included information on the size and integrity of the cavern.

The agency also wants I&W to submit a closure plan for its facility above the cavern, where brine well operations were halted last fall after the state became concerned about a potential collapse at the site.

"We think it's time the company do something. This was their business and we don't think that the state should be stuck paying the bill," Oil Conservation Division Director Mark Fesmire said during a recent visit to the site.

I&W did not immediately return calls seeking comment on the state's demands.

Eugene Irby, whose family owns the company, said previously that I&W has always followed the law and performed annual pressure tests on the well as required. He has argued that the state is overreacting because of two brine well collapses north of Carlsbad during a four-month span last year.

Unlike the well in Carlsbad, the others were far from homes and businesses. They left behind sinkholes that spanned hundreds of feet and were at least 100 feet deep.

The Oil Conservation Division said the I&W well shares some characteristics with the collapsed wells.