Ups and Downs of the Tully Valley Brine Field
The Ups and Downs of Post-Closure Subsidence Monitoring at the Tully Valley Brine Field, New York
Peter Briggs and Kathleen Sanford
Presented at fall 2000 meeting of the Solution Mining Research Institute October 2000
Abstract
The Solvay Process Company's solution mining operations in Tully Valley, located approximately 18 miles south of Syracuse, New York, commenced in 1888, flourished for one hundred years and resulted in the drilling of 167 wells. Allied Chemical Company and its successor, AlliedSignal, continued operations started by The Solvay Process Company and produced more than one billion gallons of brine annually for the half-century ending in 1986. In 1988, all of the abandoned wells were ordered plugged at the direction of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation's ("NYSDEC") Division of Mineral Resources.
A formal subsidence monitoring program for the brine field was instituted by Allied Chemical Company in 1959 and continued until 1991. A post-closure subsidence monitoring program, required by the State in conjunction with the well plugging agreement, started in 1993. Results to date have been both unexpected and interesting. Questions persist as to the validity and value of the post-closure monitoring data, requiring a retrospective analysis of the short and long-term objectives and methods of post-closure subsidence monitoring at the Tully Valley brine field.
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