A spokesperson for Texas-based Overflow Energy confirmed this week that her company is constructing a salt water disposal well at a site west of Kingfisher Cemetery on S.H. 33.

Lori Hearon, who is listed as a contact person for Overflow Energy in Booker, Texas, said “the majority of the water at this location will be piped water.”

“We don’t anticipate any major increase to the current traffic on Highway 33,” Hearon wrote in an email to the Times and Free Press Monday.

Oklahoma Department of Transportation spokesperson Lisa Shearer-Salim said the company provided the same information to ODOT in a request for a permit to construct two driveways onto the highway.

That stretch of S.H. 33 between Kingfisher and Watonga has been designated as a safety corridor due to increased large truck traffic and the number of accidents that have occurred in recent years.

The special designation has brought reduced speed limits in some areas, additional signage and educational efforts, zero tolerance for excessive speed and heightened traffic enforcement efforts by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

Shearer-Salim said the driveway permits were approved Aug. 16 by ODOT Division 4 in Perry.

“Division personnel assessed site distance, driveway dimensions and culvert sizes among other factors,” she said. “The driveways met all standards and specifications.”

Shearer-Salim said Overflow Energy told ODOT that additional traffic in and out of the site would be no more than 10 trucks per day and would taper off even further by the end of the year.

Other factors considered by ODOT were the number of collisions that have occurred in that area, which Shearer-Salim said include four since 2016, two with injuries and two with property damage only.

“They average about one per year, with none so far in 2019,” she said.

“ODOT does its best to work with landowners to provide access to property on state highways but can say no to driveway permit requests if the driveway would not be in the best interest of the traveling public,” she said.

She added that the ODOT traffic engineer who reviewed the application found the anticipated number of trucks “was not a significant concern with the traffic already entering there” from the nearby county road.

The location is outside Kingfisher city limits and so beyond the zoning power of the city and Kingfisher County has no zoning regulations or authority controlling where commercial activities are located.

However, neither City Manager Dave Slezickey nor Dist. 3 County Commissioner Heath Dobrovolny were aware of the saltwater disposal well construction in progress until contacted by the Times and Free Press this week.

Dobrovolny noted that the construction project is located in the floodplain, requiring a special permit from the county, which to his knowledge had not been requested by Overflow Energy.

“Our staff will be looking into that,” he said.

He also expressed concern about the location of the site, which would have trucks entering and exiting near a curve.

“Even 10 more trucks a day concerns me on that highway and at that location,” he said. “I hope ODOT will consider lowering the speed limit.”

Slezickey said although the location is outside the city’s jurisdiction, increased truck traffic coming in and out of the site will impact traffic flow into Kingfisher.

“If we see an increase in accidents in that area, that can potentially increase the burden on the city’s emergency responders and other resources,” he added.

Tom Robins, founder and president of Energize for Safety Coalition, a public-private partnership focused on reducing trafic accidents in the busy STACK and SCOOP areas, also said he was not aware of the incoming saltwater disposal well.

Robins said in response to an email from the Times and Free Press that he was reaching out to Overflow Energy to invite them to become participants in the coalition, which includes a large number of other area oil industry representatives as well as local law enforcement, ODOT and the Department of Public Safety.

He had not received a response as of press time Tuesday afternoon, he said.

Beyond providing a statement as to the number of estimated trucks in and out of the facility, Hearon of Overflow Energy did not respond to additional email inquiries from the Times and Free Press as to when the facility expects to begin operations.

Shearer-Salim said ODOT also is paying special attention to the S.H. 33 Kingfisher to Watonga route due to the safety corridor designation, but “each location requesting highway access is assessed individually.”

“If traffic conditions change, we may look at different solutions” regarding the access points for the disposal well, Shearer-Salim said.

Some of those solutions may include additional signage or turning lanes, she said.