Leamington man says order to plug leaking gas well could cost him his house

A Leamington property owner is fighting with the province about who is responsible for cleaning up a water well that is leaking gas on one of his lots.

"The situation is kind of at a stalemate," David Cockerham said.

Cockerham is currently being ordered by the Ministry of Environment to plug a well that sits in the corner of a lot that he owns next to his primary residence — a job that could potentially cost upwards of $900,000. 

"I have to ask myself, what can I afford, what's the reasonable thing to do, what makes the most sense in terms of options and how does that affect the community, how does that affect my neighbours," he said.

"The decision is, you don't do something that is unsafe, something that is unknown."

Cockerham, who lives in the 100 block of Robson Road, uncovered the leaking pipe on the lot in 2016. It smelled of rotten eggs, the signature smell of hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a substance that is both flammable and corrosive.

The provincial government has determined the well is a water well and therefore does not fall under the Ministry of Natural Resources Abandoned Works program, which would cover the costs to deal with it. The Ministry of Environment deals with water well remediation and puts the onus on property owners.

"I'm not going to do it," he said, adding that the ministry is moving forward.

"They're going to do the engineering reports to drill, [and] they're going to charge me for it which means they would probably have to take my property to pay for it and they're going drill anyway."

A similar debate about which government department was responsible happened this summer after an explosion caused by H2S gas destroyed two buildings in Wheatley. In the end, it was the Ministry of Natural Resources that took the lead.

"We know what happened in Wheatley and that shouldn't have happened," Cockerham said.  

He discovered the well around the same time another well was being dealt with on a property just down the road — a task that was covered by the Ministry of Natural Resources. 

Jim McIntosh, a petroleum engineer, said he worked on that project and inspected Cockerham's as well.

"It appears to be potentially very similar," McIntosh said.