OREM, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--EcoVAP, Inc. is proud to announce the first results of a pilot-scale EcoVAP Evaporation Matrix at the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility (“BGNDRF”) in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The project is being partly financed by the Bureau of Reclamation (“Reclamation”) based on EcoVAP winning a grant to dispose of excess brine water in the lowest cost and most environmentally-friendly way possible.

A recent ruling by the US Supreme Court on the breadth of the Clean Water Act (1972) is expected to have significant precedent-setting implications for all wastewater injection wells. The Clean Water Act prohibits the polluting of water bodies beyond the pre-existing pollution level, and requires getting a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (“NPDES”) permit before disposing of wastewater. The law specifies that it applies to all direct and indirect water bodies that might be affected, with “indirect” being those that have a “significant nexus” or “navigable waters” from where the wastewater is disposed. Thus, injection wells, which mainly use underground holes and porous rock, were mostly exempt from this regulation. However, Justice Stephen Breyer argued that “navigable waters” should include the “indirect” contamination of seepage and flows from underground pathways, as is often the case, and thus that the “discharge of polluted water into the ground, rather than directly into nearby waterways, does not relieve an industry of complying with the Clean Water Act." Despite this decision being focused on a relatively small (Hawaii’s Maui Island) case, and on sewage (as opposed to many other wastewaters that use injection well disposal), the ruling is expected to have broad implications for all injection disposal including produced water (from oil/gas) and other mining and industrial wastewaters that are targeted by EcoVAP.

In response to a 88x increase since 2018 in >3 Richter scale earthquakes in the Permian, Texas regulators are imposing restrictions that can shut-down or sharply curtail the volumes of certain saltwater injection wells (“SWDs”). As a result, transportation costs to ever more distant and less seismicity-dangerous SWDs could lead West Texas Shale E+P costs to increase by $207mn (currently contemplated curtailments/shutdowns) and as much as $763mn (assuming curtailments and shut-downs of all of the SWDs in the earthquake-prone areas). As an enhanced evaporation company, EcoVAP carries no seismicity risk, and is generally able to evaporate with 1/40th the land footprint and lower costs than conventional evaporation. Moreover, because EcoVAP’s Evaporation Matrices are fully scalable to any wastewater disposal need, they can be located at the well-head or tank battery, thus implying no trucking. EcoVAP already operates one such facility in the Eagle Ford (See Case Study: https://www.ecovap.com/case-studies/oil-gas-operation)