3 Billion Gallons Of Fracking Wastewater Pumped Into Clean California Aquifiers: “Errors Were Made” State Admits

 Tyler Durden's picture

Dear California readers: if you drank tapwater this morning (or at any point in the past few weeks/months), you may be in luck as you no longer need to buy oil to lubricate your engine: just use your blood, and think of the cost-savings. That’s the good news.

Also, the bad news, because as the California’s Department of Conservation’s Chief Deputy Director, Jason Marshall, told NBC Bay Area, California state officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump up to 3 billion gallons (call it 70 million barrels) of oil fracking-contaminated waste water into formerly clean aquifiers, aquifiers which at least on paper are supposed to be off-limits to that kind of activity, and are protected by the government’s EPA – an agency which, it appears, was richly compensated by the same oil and gas companies to look elsewhere.

And the scariest words of admission one can ever hear from a government apparatchik: “In multiple different places of the permitting process an error could have been made.”

Because nothing short of a full-blown disaster prompts the use of the dreaded passive voice. And what was unsaid is that the “biggest error that was made” is that someone caught California regulators screwing over the taxpayers just so a few oil majors could save their shareholders a few billion dollars in overhead fees.

And now that one government agency has been caught flaunting the rules, the other government agencies, and certainly private citizens and businesses, start screaming: after all some faith in the well-greased, pardon the pun, government apparatus has to remain:

“It’s inexcusable,” said Hollin Kretzmann, at the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco. “At (a) time when California is experiencing one of the worst droughts in history, we’re allowing oil companies to contaminate what could otherwise be very useful ground water resources for irrigation and for drinking. It’s possible these aquifers are now contaminated irreparably.”

The process, for those confused, explained by NBC:

In “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing operations, oil and gas companies use massive amounts of water to force the release of underground fossil fuels. The practice produces large amounts of waste water that must then be disposed of.

 

Marshall said that often times, oil and gas companies simply re-inject that waste water back deep underground where the oil extraction took place. But other times, Marshall said, the waste water is re-injected into aquifers closer to the surface. Those injections are supposed to go into aquifers that the EPA calls “exempt”—in other words, not clean enough for humans to drink or use.

 

But in the State’s letter to the EPA, officials admit that in at least nine waste water injection wells, the waste water was injected into “non-exempt” or clean aquifers containing high quality water.

 

For the EPA, “non-exempt” aquifers are underground bodies of water that are “containing high quality water” that can be used by humans to drink, water animals or irrigate crops.

 

If the waste water re-injection well “went into a non-exempt aquifer. It should not have been permitted,” said Marshall.

Yet it was, to the tune of 3 billion gallons. And nobody said a word about it until someone finally did a little research and found that people, especially those in power, lie.

And lie they did because the severity of the pollution is only now becoming clear:

In its reply letter to the EPA, California’s Water Resources Control Board said its “staff identified 108 water supply wells located within a one-mile radius of seven…injection wells” and that The Central Valley Water Board conducted sampling of “eight water supply wells in the vicinity of some of these… wells.”

 

“This is something that is going to slowly contaminate everything we know around here,” said fourth- generation Kern County almond grower Tom Frantz, who lives down the road from several of the injection wells in question.

 

According to state records, as many as 40 water supply wells, including domestic drinking wells, are located within one mile of a single well that’s been injecting into non-exempt aquifers.

 

That well is located in an area with several homes nearby, right in the middle of a citrus grove southeast of Bakersfield.

 

Cue the just as angry community organizers:

“That’s a huge concern and communities who rely on water supply wells near these injection wells have a lot of reason to be concerned that they’re finding high levels of arsenic and thallium and other chemicals nearby where these injection wells have been allowed to operate,” said Kretzmann.

 

“It is a clear worry,” said Juan Flores, a Kern County community organizer for the Center on Race, Poverty and The Environment. “We’re in a drought. The worst drought we’ve seen in decades. Probably the worst in the history of agriculture in California.”

 

“No one from this community will drink from the water from out of their well,” said Flores. “The people are worried. They’re scared.”

It remains to be seen just whom that other, far more prominent community organizer will blame for this latest environmental debacle. Surely it will somehow be the fault of the Keystone pipeline?

In the meantime, the oil companies are already taking defensive measures, blaming the fiasco on… a “paperwork issue.”

The trade association that represents many of California’s oil and gas companies says the water-injection is a “paperwork issue.” In a statement issued to NBC Bay Area, Western States Petroleum Association spokesman Tupper Hull said “there has never been a bona vide claim or evidence presented that the paperwork confusion resulted in any contamination of drinking supplies near the disputed injection wells.”

Well, actually, there is:

However, state officials tested 8 water supply wells within a one-mile radius of some of those wells.

 

Four water samples came back with higher than allowable levels of nitrate, arsenic, and thallium.

 

Those same chemicals are used by the oil and gas industry in the hydraulic fracturing process and can be found in oil recovery waste-water.

And now back to the source of it all: the California Department of Conservation, where we are confident a little further investigative reporting will find millions in kickbacks and corruption, all funded by the oil and gas “lobby.”

When asked how this could happen in the first place, Marshall said that the long history of these wells makes it difficult to know exactly what the thinking was.

 

“When you’re talking about wells that were permitted in 1985 to 1992, we’ve tried to go back and talk to some of the permitting engineers,” said Marshall. “And it’s unfortunate but in some cases they (the permitting engineers) are deceased.”

 

Kern County’s Water Board referred the Investigative Unit to the state for comment.

We hope to learn who the state will refer the unit for comment next.

Finally, for those living around the blue dots, avoiding the tapwater for the time being may be a good idea.

As for whether the public’s opinion about fracking is changed as a result of revelations such as this: we reserve judgment until comparative Investigative Units piece uncover how many billion gallons in fracking wastewater was dumped in other states where the shale miracle is (still) alive and well.

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Persnickety
Persnickety

Ummm, yeah.

comment image

SSS

Non-story ….. so far. Example:

“However, state officials tested 8 water supply wells within a one-mile radius of some of those wells.
Four water samples came back with higher than allowable levels of nitrate, arsenic, and thallium.”

How much higher? Not answered. The fucking federal government has been establishing ever-increasing stricter standards on “clean water,” which has done NOTHING to make the water safer to drink, but only to increase the COST of water to the consumer.

This is but one of many of the stealth attacks on the pocketbook of the poor and middle classes. Death by a thousand tiny cuts.

Dutchman
Dutchman

I wondered why we had 20 lb tomatoes!

Golden Oxen
Golden Oxen

Never have I been conned as bad as with this fracking bull shit.

Laughter was my immediate and instinctive reply when first hearing about it.

These clowns think they are going to drill out and destroy the environment, create earthquakes, poison the precious remaining aquifers, with the country in severe drought on top of it?

The environmentalists will put a stop to this madness before it even begins was my thought. What a mistake.

Still waiting. Whatever happened to the Sierra Club and Greenpeace and all of that??

yahsure
yahsure

Make the fracking liquids used, public and make them non toxic. We just can’t have our water supplies screwed up and made unusable. Like California hasn’t got enough problems with water.

flash
flash

I guess the State of Kookifornia should issue Caution :Your Ass May Be Flammable warning to all those now drinking the fraking water …frak that.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Newsflash, rocks are porous.

Its how fracking fluids work.

Leobeer
Leobeer

Very funny view of fracking.

Persnickety
Persnickety

“Newsflash, rocks are porous.
Its how fracking fluids work. ”

No, actually, if the rocks that held oil in a given formation and location were porous, you wouldn’t need to fracture them, you would just need a straw. Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is used when the rocks are NOT porous, or not porous enough to allow useful production rates from a given well, but hold oil. Fracking fluid is injected into the well at 10’s of thousands of PSI to fracture the rocks. It is then drawn back up so the oil can come out of the same well bore.

Leobeer
Leobeer
SSS

Bunch of fracking idiots on this site, led by Golden Oxen, who said …..

“These clowns think they are going to drill out and destroy the environment, create earthquakes, poison the precious remaining aquifers, with the country in severe drought on top of it? The environmentalists will put a stop to this madness before it even begins was my thought. What a mistake. Still waiting. Whatever happened to the Sierra Club and Greenpeace and all of that??”

You’re waiting for the fucking Sierra Club and Greenpeace to come to your rescue, dickhead? You can’t be serious. These organizations are among the most economically destructive activists today. Bar none.

What’s your fucking solution, genius? Do you have a replacement for the internal combustion engine?

People like you make me sick. You have so much tunnel vision, you’re incapable of seeing anything long term. You’re fucking your grandchildren and their grandchildren big time. Just because YOU and your ilk, who don’t know shit from Shinola about energy, think fracking is “bad.”

That’s the extent of your mental capacity and knowledge.

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

This is just one example of how seriously our regulatory agencies are “captured”. Given the drought conditions in CA (caused by HAARP heating the Ionosphere to park a high pressure system off the coast, blocking any jet stream moisture), I’ll betcha at the very least some heads will roll. Of course that does nothing to make this virgin water clean again; that’s an impossibility once contaminated with this fracking crap.

John
John

Interesting that this is all about a bureaucratic snafu, and has nothing to do with big bag frackers or oil companies. Nope. Just dumb ass bureaucrats who don’t know how to read a electric log, and can’t be counted on to pick up the phone and call some industry folks who do know because..well…bureaucrats know everything. And California bureaucrats…probably the worst of the lot.

jamesD
jamesD

This is the worst “journalism” I’ve read in a long time. So many errors:
1. This has nothing to do with “fracking”. Disposal wells are used to reinject produced water. When you produce an oil well, you don’t get “oil”. You get an emulsion of oil, very salty water, and gas. You drop out the water and pump it back in the ground. Bakersfield is a conventional oil field with vertical wells. The waste water is salt water. They just added “fracking” to spice up the story.

2. The salt water contains extremely high levels of sodium, calcium, magnesium, and chlorides. Therefore these are the indicators you would look for, not arsenic. If you watch the video, the State dude says they believe the arsenic is background. Which makes sense since you don’t use arsenic in oil production. Same goes with Thallium. Thallium that is not naturally occurring comes from ore smelting. If you wanted to test for well contamination, you’d be looking to see salt levels rising. Even this is not perfect, because as you pull water out of an aquifer, the water will slowly pull up heavier salt water.
3. This non-exempt aquifer is supposedly suitable for drinking water. So in a record drought where farmers are losing their farms, no one has ever tried to pump water from it? Smells fishy to me.

Golden Oxen
Golden Oxen

Hi SSS, Pleasure to meet you. You addressed me an accused me of being anti business.

Nothing could be further than the truth, I am a Libertarian and believer in capitalism and the free market economy.

I do think however, and it is not inconsistent with my Libertarian status, that there are those who will do harm to others, especially for money, and we need a legal system and the ability to protest freely against such practices.

My personal opinion is that fracking, GMO foods being forced upon us, Fiat money, Cigarettes, sold to children, Bankster’s and their scams, a lengthy list of examples like this are the work of pricks who will fuck and harm anyone for money.

May I remind you that the same oil industry you admire was forced to take LEAD, yes fucking LEAD out of gasoline just a few decades ago.

Your apparent view that some extra oil production from this insidious process is more important than safeguarding our precious remaining free water supply is not one I agree with.

My scientific background and geologic is wanting, so I have no solution of my own to the energy problem, which you justly criticize me for. Great strides are being made in renewables it seems, and I have a layman’s belief that we can get along without this fracking. My honest belief is that simple conservation is dismissed mistakenly as not being effective. We could all use a lot less energy and do a lot less wasteful driving if we had a mind to, and it would give solar and all the other alternatives a chance to do a catch up.

TJF
TJF

@Westcoaster: I can’t tell if you are really blaming the drought on HAARP or if you were being sarcastic. Please elaborate.

IndenturedServant

Well this ought to do wonders for property values.

All for a few more $$. The human race really is in decline. Taken as a group, we have no redeeming qualities. Please, please let it be terminal.

Spinolator
Spinolator

It’s just water people. Somebody will come up with a solution! Just relax, drink (not that water) and be merry. It’s not your problem if you don’t live there. Fuck them. You made your money. You’re good. It’s all about the Benjies. Moving on…

SSS

@ Golden Oxen

I’m posting this wonderful news just for you. Sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite. Heh.

NORFOLK, Va. – Over the objection of environmental groups and Virginia’s governor, a federal management plan released Tuesday will allow a form of natural gas drilling known as fracking to occur in parts of the largest national forest on the East Coast.

The U.S. Forest Service originally planned to ban fracking in the 1.1 million-acre George Washington National Forest, but energy companies cried foul after a draft of the plan was released in 2011. It would have been the first outright ban on the practice in a national forest.

“We think we’ve ended up in a much better place, which is we are allowing oil and gas drilling,” Robert Bonnie, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary for natural resources and environment, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

“From a policy perspective, the Forest Service allows fracking on forest lands throughout the country. We didn’t want to make a policy decision or change policy related to fracking. This decision is about where it’s appropriate to do oil and gas leasing.”

Land in national forests is commonly leased out for commercial and recreational purposes, such as mining, timber, and skiing. The plan also addresses timber acreage, wildlife habitat and waterways.

Smoke Jensen
Smoke Jensen

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA!
To all of the Bakersfield and Kern county’s residents who’s taxes paid for the fucking trooper that wrote me a speeding ticket and suspended my Kalifornia’s DL, SUCK IT!
I hope that Trooper got a good belly full of contaminated water.
Bitter? I’m not bitter.
I’m glad I’m not from Kalifornia.
And to the Kalifornia Franchise Tax Board, Fuck you too. My FL is not suspended in my state.

Kill Bill
Kill Bill

Since oil prices have .dropped their is no need to frack. The ROI is just not there

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