Sabrina and Ralph Jones spend time in their kitchen with their children on May 18, 2023, in rural Nokomis. The couple moved out to the country to live a quiet life. This spring, Navigator CO2 started a 24/7 drilling site about 500 feet from their home.Jones spotted four wooden surveyor stakes in the farm field across the street, each one marked with a strip of orange plastic.
Now, Nokomis-area residents say they have yet another reason to question the project: the drilling operation outside the Joneses’ house. “Navigator takes being a good neighbor to heart and continues to work hard to minimize disruptions to neighbors and others that work or live in and around the site,” the company wrote.Ralph Jones held his toddler on his hip as he gave a tour of the family’s 5-acre property, surrounded on all sides by corn and wheat fields, with no other houses in sight.
The drilling rig is still across the street from the Joneses, as work to complete the well continues, according to Navigator. The company anticipates the rig will be removed in late July. The truck came back for more water at about 1 p.m., and shortly after that Castellanos said, her own water slowed to a trickle.The driver said he would slow down his water retrieval and he left — about an hour later — saying he had stopped at about 600 gallons, Castellanos recalled. She said her water remained at just a trickle until about 5:30 p.m.Navigator said the drilling generally required about 2,000 gallons a day, or roughly the amount of water consumed by seven area homes.
In response to a question about the Joneses’ claim that they got no call, letter or visit from Navigator, alerting them to the plan to drill, Navigator responded that it held a meeting in January to share updates with the community. the in-person meeting held by Navigator, he asked whether there would be backup safety valves on the pipeline to shut off the flow of CO2 in the case of an emergency. And then he asked again. And again.
The company said that comparing carbon dioxide and soda is a communication strategy Navigator uses to start the pipeline conversation and “help the public recognize that CO2 is something they experience in their everyday lives.”