Hutchinson — Hutchinson city officials will get reports Tuesday on developments since the natural gas explosions hit the city a year ago.
The city council will hear from Lee Allison, director of the Kansas Geological Survey, and Ron Hammerschmidt, who heads the Division of Environment in the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
The reports come two days before the one-year anniversary of the disastrous explosions that destroyed two downtown businesses and a mobile home and claimed the lives of both mobile home occupants.
The explosions resulted from natural gas leaking from a salt cavern at the Yaggy gas storage field 7 miles northwest of Hutchinson. That gas eventually erupted from old brine wells beneath the city, causing the blasts and gas geysers.
The vent-well program to remove gas trapped in the ground "was a tremendous success," Allison said. Fifty-seven vent wells were drilled, and gas was struck in seven. Only three of those wells continue to vent small amounts of gas.
More significantly, Allison said, the Kansas Geological Survey may be close to pinpointing how the leaking gas was able to reach Hutchinson.
Survey geologists believe the gas traveled through a thin corridor of dolomite rock fractured by geologic forces eons ago deep within the Earth.
Dolomite rock normally isn't porous and would not easily allow gas to move through it. However, survey crews found a fracture zone about 10 feet thick and 150 to 250 feet wide that coincided with where gas was located in three smaller "fingers," Allison said.
He recently asked the U.S. Geological Survey to help fund a $3 million to $4 million scientific study of Hutchinson's geology.
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