Texas Approves Use Of Fracking Wastewater To Irrigate Crops

We are what we eat, and what we eat is completely dependent on what we grow. Only 3% of the water in the entire world is fresh, and most of that is locked away in glaciers. It is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that the water we use to irrigate our crops should not contain toxins that are harmful to human health. And yet, modern oil and methane extraction techniques rely heavily on fracking, a process that injects water at high pressure deep underground to fracture the rock below so the oil and methane trapped there can be extracted.

But the frackers don’t use just any water. Oh, no. First they add all sorts of toxic crud to it, stuff they think will help induce the rocks below to slip and slide more easily and therefore release more oil and methane. But they don’t want the other fracking companies to know what stuff they are adding to make their fracking water more effective.

That is a trade secret, which must be zealously guarded from becoming public knowledge. Parents whose children attend school near fracked wells aren’t allowed to know. Government regulators aren’t allowed to know. No one must know, because America is in the middle of a self-declared “energy emergency” and nothing must be allowed to slow its insatiable quest for more petroleum products.

Do you think we are making this up? According to Sharon Kelly of DeSmog, on April 6, a Chevron well in Galeton, Colorado, blew out, sending a geyser of wastewater high into the air. An elementary school a mile away was closed for two weeks while the clean-up took place. Anxious parents wanted to know what stuff was in the water their children were exposed to, but Chevron said everything they needed to know was disclosed on a website maintained by FracFocus.

Indeed, a long list of chemicals is reported on that site and we seriously doubt any of our readers would want to drink that water. But there is one category labeled “organic surfactants” followed by the label “trade secret.” that is particularly troublesome. Not being an expert, I turned to Wikipedia to find out more about these surfactants. Here is what it has to say:

Surfactants are chemical compounds that decrease the surface tension or interfacial tension between two liquids, a liquid and a gas, or a liquid and a solid. The word surfactant is a blend of “surface-active agent”,[coined in 1950. As they consist of a water-repellent and a water-attracting part, they enable water and oil to mix; they can form foam and facilitate the detachment of dirt.

Surfactants are among the most widespread and commercially important chemicals. Private households as well as many industries use them in large quantities as detergents and cleaning agents, but also for example as emulsifiers, wetting agents, foaming agents, antistatic additives, or dispersants.

Surfactants occur naturally in traditional plant-based detergents, e.g. horse chestnuts or soap nuts; they can also be found in the secretions of some caterpillars. Today one of the most commonly used anionic surfactants, linear alkylbenzene sulfates (LAS), are produced from petroleum products. However, surfactants are increasingly produced in whole or in part from renewable biomass, like sugar, fatty alcohol from vegetable oils, by-products of biofuel production, or other biogenic material.

Drink Your Fracking Water!

In 2019, Chris Wright, the head of Liberty Energy, a fracking company, staged a public demonstration in which he and several employees all drank fracking water, a stupid stunt designed to convince the unwary that fracking water is perfectly safe. The thing is, though, Wright, who is now the head of the Energy Department, didn’t say exactly what was in the water, only that it contained three additives used in fracking. Sharp-eyed readers will note that the three bottles in the foreground of the picture above were conveniently left unlabeled for this charade. Wanna bet almost none of the toxic chemicals listed in the FracFocus report were included in those cocktails?

This topic is all coming to a head right now because the great state of Texas has just passed legislation that allows recycled fracking wastewater to be used to irrigate crops in the Lone Star state. According to WFAA News in Texas, proponents argue the recycled water could supplement the state’s supply of fresh water and incentify the oil and gas industries to clean up their messes. Critics say it could contaminate the very land Texans depend on for food and survival.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller believes the concept has potential if done right. “Well, we need water. We don’t really care what the source is as long as it’s good, clean water that we can grow crops with. Fracking water would be fine,” he said. He added that first all harmful substances like heavy metals would need to be removed. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality would be responsible for regulating the process. “As long as this water meets those strict guidelines, I don’t have a problem with it,” Miller added.

Miller said technological advancements are bringing the state closer to being able to fully clean and reuse produced water. “I don’t know that we’re all the way there yet, but with the technology and AI and everything that we’ve got available to us now, we’re in the technology age, so it’s certainly doable and it’s, you know, probably doable pretty quick, I would think.”

Farmers In Texas Are Not Convinced

Farmers in Johnson County, Texas, are already fighting toxic sewage-based fertilizer biosolids. They are outraged by the new legislation that approves using wastewater from fracking to irrigate crops despite the fact that it contains many of the same carcinogenic chemicals found in those fertilizers,

“There was another bill that was put forth that would allow fracking water to be land applied. They’re going to… treat it and then it’s gonna be safe for land application,” Dana Ames, who lives in Johnson County, told WFAA News. “Contaminated with all kinds of chemicals from oil and gas fracking. We don’t even know all the chemicals because they’re proprietary.”

The residents of Johnson County have reason to be concerned. While Sid Miller says state authorities will closely monitor all this, Colorado passed legislation in 2022 that required companies to disclose all of the chemicals used in oil and gas wells within that state, including chemicals classified as trade secrets. But Colorado’s reporting law is routinely broken, according to a report in May entitled Oil & Gas Chemicals Still Secret in Colorado,” which DeSmog says was written by three environmental groups.

Attentive readers may well ask, “If those wastewater recyclers don’t know what is in the water they are recycling, how will they know what chemicals need to be removed to make it safe to use?” At CleanTechnica, we think that is an excellent question.

Texas Is Not Alone

But don’t get the impression that Texas is the only state where this is happening. The Center for Food Safety says reclaimed fracking water is routinely used to irrigate crops in the San Joaquin valley of California, where much of the fruits and vegetables for US consumers are grown. That water can be a threat to organic farmers who may lose their organic status because of the presence of unknown or undisclosed synthetic chemicals in their irrigation water.

Farmers also face the possibility that their irrigation water is poisoning their crops, livestock, and soil, and harming their farm workers — those that haven’t been deported yet. Consumers have no way of knowing if those chemicals are absorbed by the fruits and vegetables they are eating.

The problem, of course, is that the people of America are now just vassals of corporations that are free to pollute to their heart’s content in the quest for profits. An example of how bad things have gotten is House Bill 49, which shields oil producers, landowners, and treatment facilities from legal liability if treated water causes harm, unless there is gross negligence or criminal behavior. Critics say that leaves Texans exposed and voiceless.

When you are at your local grocery store this week, ask yourself how much you know about where the food you are buying was grown and whether it is safe. The answer is, unless you grew it yourself in your own garden, you probably have no idea. We take food safety as an article of faith and corporations take advantage of our trusting natures to get away with all sorts of shenanigans they don’t want us to know about.

DeSmog says the Colorado reporting law is routinely broken. The May report Oil & Gas Chemicals Still Secret in Colorado, written by three environmental groups including the Sierra Club, found more than 30 million pounds of secret chemicals were injected underground at oil and gas sites in Colorado since the law went into effect in 2022. State-wide, chemical disclosures were available for just 439 of the 1,114 wells covered by the 2022 law — a compliance rate of just 39%.

“We don’t know what the local people, including schoolchildren at the nearby school, were exposed to,” said Ramesh Bhatt, chair of the Colorado Sierra Club Conservation Committee. “Unfortunately, this seems to be a pattern in this state.” It’s a pattern in every state where fossil fuel companies do business. We may be what we eat, but we have no idea what is in the food we are eating.

Big Ag and Big Oil shell out big bucks to politicians to keep the public ill informed. As long as we let our political leaders get away with this scam, we are all at risk of being poisoned by the very things we put in our bodies when we sit down to eat. Frankly, that should concern every one of us. That it doesn’t is indicative of how far down the road we are to being slaves of our corporations. Drink up, people. What could possibly go wrong?

Hat tip to Dan Allard.