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Concerns arise over well near ruins
The Associated PressMaana Gas Inc. plans to use directional drilling to tap resources on 160 acres it leases beneath the national monument, going 1,000 to 2,000 feet deep. The well pad will be 125 feet from the northwest corner of the monument.
Larry Baker, executive director at nearby Salmon Ruins, said Aztec Ruins has many culturally significant artifacts that could be damaged, and even building new trails could be curtailed by potential vapors from drilling.
Some of the 1,000-year-old structures in Aztec Ruins are three stories tall, and Baker worries that vibrations from drilling could weaken them. Truck traffic to haul waste products from the site also could disturb the fragile ruins, he said.
Maana Gas owner Ed Hartman said there's no relationship between the formation to be drilled and the surface where the ruins lie, and despite being near the ruins, the company will drill because that's where the gas is.
Maana Gas owns the subsurface rights, Hartman said.
Baker fears construction could damage unknown artifacts. The northwest corner of the monument may seem featureless, but it's not known what might be below the surface, he said.
"We may not understand what's under the ground that's just beyond what we can see," he said.
Hartman said the well site is too far away to disturb the monument.
"It's only a small hole so we're not going to affect the surface in any way," he said.
Baker said that in the 1970s, construction of a gas and oil well near Salmon ruins destroyed a pueblo that was not then known, keeping researchers from a greater understanding of its relationship to nearby ruins.
"It would have been nice to have been able to study that," Baker said.
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