In April, Facebook left broken equipment and thousands of gallons of drilling fluid under the ocean floor just off the coast of Oregon. The company was constructing a landing pad for a submarine telecommunications cable when it caught an unexpected snap. A drill bit broke and got stuck after it hit hard rock about 50 feet under the sea wall on April 28, Oregon Live and the Tillamook Headlight-Herald first reported in early August.
Residents of the coastal community of Tierra del Mar, Oregon, have feared that the construction of the landing site would cause problems for locals and the environment since it was first proposed in 2018. One of the biggest threats with an incident like this, experts say, is the potential release of drilling fluid that can damage marine life and contaminate groundwater, depending on what chemicals are present in the fluid.
“Fifty feet is not very much a separation in terms of keeping something nasty out of the sea flower environment,” says Chris Goldfinger, a professor at the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. Rocks are highly permeable, and liquids flow through them all the time, he added. “It may not happen right away, but eventually, if it does, it would probably leak on the seabed,” he says.
The drilling mud used to lubricate the equipment was a clay called bentonite with small amounts of a polymer additive, according to Facebook. It is biodegradable and nontoxic, the company says The edge. Bentonite on its own is usually not bad for the environment, says John Dilles, another professor of geology at Oregon State The edge in an email. It is sometimes used to pick up toxic metal on sites that need to be cleaned or where waste needs to be contained, he says.
However, in the event of an accidental release, the drilling fluid components used at the site should be prevented from entering “sewers, waterways, or empty areas,” according to safety data sheets published by the state. Facebook chose to leave 6,500 gallons of mud to ‘minimize the risk of leaks’, it wrote.
Facebook also left a drill tip, tool, and 1,100 feet of pipe behind. It is not uncommon for companies to leave pieces of broken equipment behind when digging it is more expensive as it can cause even more destruction. There is a risk of losing more equipment if you work through hard rock, according to Goldfinger.
Facebook stated that there would be no “negative impact on environment as well as public health” from leaving the borehole, it said in an email. But the Oregon Department of State Lands thinks other solutions might have been considered if they had been in the notification earlier. Facebook did not inform the state that it had left the materials until June 17, seven weeks after the drill broke. That delay “eliminates all possible equipment repair options,” Ali Hansen spokeswoman Ali Hansen said The edge in an email. “The opportunity to fully evaluate repair options was lost” when Facebook sealed the borehole without notifying the state, Hansen said.
The original license for the project does not allow Facebook subsidiary Edge Cable Holdings to store materials on the site. As a result, the State Department gave Facebook a month to reach an agreement on damages the state owes for disputing the permit. They also gave the company 180 days to submit a new permit or safely remove the equipment. Facebook plans to continue with the construction of the cable landing in 2021. It will be the end point for the JUPITER cable system, which will connect the US with Japan and the Philippines. Amazon and SoftBank also own parts of the cable.
Facebook did not respond The edgeQuestions about whether to continue will oversee any materials it leaves on the site or pay for issues that may arise in the future. “Facebook must face a significant fine to cover all costs incurred by the state in dealing with this ugly failure. The state of Oregon has so far been too welcoming for submarine cable companies, ”the nonprofit advocacy group Oregon Coast Alliance, which has consistently opposed the project, wrote in a July newsletter.
