Owner/Client
Waco Oil & Gas Co., Inc.
Location
Glenville, WV
CEC Services
- NPDES Permitting Support
- Erosion & Sedimentation Control/NPDES Permitting
- Geotechnical Engineering
- Slope Stability/Retaining Structure Design
- Clean Water Act, Section 401/404 Permitting
- Ecosystem Restoration
- Fish and Macroinvertebrate Surveys
- Invasive Plant Management
- Aquatic & Terrestrial Habitat Surveys
- Wetland & Stream Mitigation Design
- Wetlands & Waters Delineations
- LiDAR Surveys – Short and Long Range
- Tree and Stream Surveys
Owner Objective
Headquartered in Glenville, West Virginia, Waco Oil & Gas Co., Inc. is one of the leading oil and gas manufacturers. It maintains land, technology and mapping, accounting, drilling, production, field service, and swabbing departments. The company owns equipment that is utilized to drill, complete, and operate oil and gas wells. It also maintains a full-time service rig and three swabbing rigs for third parties.
Waco needed tasks completed associated with an Administrative Order for Compliance issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). Under the Order, Waco was required to submit a Mitigation and Restoration Plan to compensate for unauthorized impacts to the Waters of the U.S. at their U.S. Route 19 Morris Development Site (Site). The Site is within the Allegheny Plateau in the Appalachian Mountains. The development of a restoration plan was in compliance with the United States Army Corps of Engineers and USEPA Code of Federal Regulations, Title 33, Part 322 (“Compensatory Mitigation for Losses of Aquatic Resources”). This restoration plan aimed to review and offset incidental impacts to streams and wetlands associated with the Site.
CEC Approach
CEC was retained due to its ability to provide full capacity of ecological, civil, and geotechnical services. The USEPA has previously worked closely with us and approved and facilitated permitting for past projects. The restoration plan would provide ecological uplift through a combination of actions that addressed instream habitat; bank erosion; riparian corridor buffers; and improved habitat quality, diversity, and connectivity. The restoration would be accomplished by implementing natural channel design (NCD) techniques. Reference reach data was collected in a nearby Wildlife Management Area and used for the development of the design criteria. A significant challenge of the Site involved obtaining extensive geotechnical analysis and engineering steep headwater valleys before implementing NCD techniques. Geotechnical stability was critical for a stable stream design with higher gradient systems.
The potential for streambank erosion was assessed using the Bank Erosion Hazard Index and Near Bank Stress analysis. Additional surveys for vertical stability were assessed using cross-sectional and longitudinal profile surveys. The streams were high-gradient, ephemeral, intermittent, and perennial, and determined to be vertically and laterally unstable. Mitigation included a combination of on-site and off-site restoration.
The restoration plan was reviewed by the EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice for approval. Feedback from the EPA was been well received, and few comments were anticipated. Construction started in the spring of 2023 and was completed in 2025. We provided construction support services including pre- and postconstruction surveys and construction quality assurance during implementation. Our team is currently being used over ten years for annual monitoring working with Waco on potential maintenance and/or required corrective actions.
