McCook's new claim to fame? It's an injection well; not used for fracking

McCOOK, Neb. -- The City of McCook is the only municipality in the state of Nebraska that owns an injection well and it has nothing to do with fracking, at least according to one city official.

"I always get asked, 'is that part of the fracking?'," said Utilities Director Jesse Dutcher with a chuckle during a McCook City Council meeting earlier this month.

Fracking involves pumping water underground with tremendous amounts of pressure, in some cases thousands of pounds of pressure, while McCook's injection well is gravity fed and actually has negative pressure, Dutcher explained.

"Our water, because the Cedar Hills Formation has such a loose formation, our water actually goes in at the top under a negative. We don't put any pump on it at all, it actually gravity flows into it," he said.

The meter on the well registers negative pressure during operation and will accept 200 gallons per minute, while the city typically runs it at 45 gallons per minute.

Dutcher said McCook is the only municipality in Nebraska that owns an injection well and the city's well receives approximately 10 million gallons of waste water annually. The well flows into the Cedar Hills Formation, which he said is a very loose formation without boundaries and qualifies as an "unlimited aquifer" during testing.

"The water that's already down there is in worse condition than the water that we're putting in there. Our waste water's better than what exists in that particular aquifer," said Dutcher, adding it was located 1800 feet below ground.

"When you take the stuff out of the water, it's got to go somewhere," said Dutcher while describing the two waste streams that leave the water treatment plant. A portion of the waste from the cation process goes into city maintained lagoons near the waste water treatment plant. The anion waste, containing arsenic, nitrate, uranium and salt, goes down one of only three injection wells in the state.