Chevron pit violated DEQ rules

This is not a news-breaking story of pollution – that was covered by longtime Pinedale Roundup owner and editor Ric Samulski – “DEQ raps Chevron for Bondurant Dump Site.”

A single mention in the late Judy Meyers’ painstaking newspaper index – one reference to the “Chevron Pit, Bondurant” that led to Samulski’s Nov. 3, 1983, article, complete with Allen Messick’s photo of a Case cat slogging through the pits.

That issue found last week in bound volumes at the Pinedale Library revealed Samulski’s reporting that Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality investigated Chevron’s unpermitted drilling-waste pits and on Oct. 20, 1983, issued Chevron a notice of violation.

With Samulski’s 1983 article as a guide, Wyoming DEQ staff pursued a Jan. 26 records request and found more than a hundred records made available by press time. They are typed, handwritten and, scrawled on – detailing the process to correct contamination from Chevron’s unlined 3-cell pit, or pond.