KDHE outlines plan to capture Burton chloride plume and blend water with Wichita supply

KDHE deputy secretary and director of environment Kate Gleason told the Agriculture and Natural Resources Budget Committee that historic unlined brine evaporation ponds used during oil and gas production have left an estimated 1,900,000 tons of salt in groundwater near Burton.

Gleeson summarized field data showing chloride concentrations commonly ranging from about 200 to 1,400 milligrams per liter in the plume and noted that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency treats chloride as a secondary contaminant (a taste-and-aesthetic guideline of 250 mg/L rather than a primary health standard). She said agricultural damage typically begins around 350 mg/L, putting irrigators and some domestic wells at risk.

Why it matters: the plume covers roughly 30 square miles, intersects private domestic wells and irrigation points, and is migrating slowly toward the Wichita Well Field used for aquifer storage and recharge (ASR), creating both local impacts and potential regional water‑supply implications.

Gleeson described the technical and cost tradeoffs KDHE reviewed. Large-scale options such as deep-well injection and pond evaporation were judged infeasible for this plume’s scale; reverse osmosis was cited as technically possible but prohibitively expensive in KDHE’s review. She told the committee an earlier estimate for reverse-osmosis treatment had been as high as $56 million and said ongoing operations and maintenance (O&M) costs for that approach would be substantial.

Gleeson outlined a phased “blending” alternative in which capture sites (labeled sites A–C) would pump contaminated groundwater to the Wichita Well Field for treatment and dilution into Wichita’s supply. KDHE estimated blending O&M at roughly $273,000 per year and said Wichita had agreed, verbally, to manage construction and to assume ongoing maintenance responsibilities if the infrastructure is transferred to the city. KDHE described the entire blending project as an estimated ~$19.3 million effort and said a first-phase funding request of $9.9 million had been proposed to begin work and refine costs.

Committee members pressed KDHE on health risks, technical details and liability. Gleeson emphasized that EPA’s secondary standard addresses taste and aesthetics and that a primary drinking-water standard would be invoked if a health-based issue were identified. KDHE also described the site as an orphan site with no viable responsible party from the historic operators, noting Kansas policy generally does not require innocent landowners to pay cleanup costs. KDHE said the Kansas Corporation Commission’s oil-and-gas remedial fund exists but is not robust enough to cover the full cost of a project at this scale.

The committee asked about how much water Wichita would receive; Gleeson said notes estimate about 2.5 million gallons (she acknowledged ambiguity in her notes whether that figure was daily or annual) and stressed that the plan could be phased to begin with one capture site while partners refine volumes and costs. She said the remediation would likely take years to decades to reduce the plume to the point that treatment could cease and that cities typically retain water rights acquired from remediation projects.

What’s next: KDHE told the committee it has funding from the state water plan to complete a feasibility study and that further detailed engineering, firm cost estimates and formal agreements with partners (including GMD 2, Wichita and KCC) would be required before committing funds or construction. Committee members signaled continued interest and asked staff to track technical clarifications and funding requests.