News

At a time when water scarcity is a major concern to all Californians, a long-established partnership in Kern County continues to provide vital relief to farmers. Local energy companies are leaders in treating suitable oilfield-produced water which the Cawelo Water District then blends with other water sources for prolonged and beneficial use in the agriculture industry. Indeed, this program, which has been successfully utilizing produced water in accordance with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board’s high standards for water quality for more than 20 years, has been a model of productive partnership between the oil and agriculture industries, providing 10 billion gallons of water annually that would otherwise not be available.

Safety of irrigation program well-established

Furthermore, regulators require ongoing testing and monitoring to help ensure the safety of this valuable, and by now venerable, program. And, preliminary results of a recent  study provide further evidence that produced water is a high-quality water supply:

“The third-party environmental toxicologist found that detected organic compounds were well within safe drinking water standards and Cawelo’s produced water is safe for agricultural use. Initial water quality laboratory analysis reported the levels of acetone in Cawelo’s produced water were 280 times below the maximum concentration considered safe for drinking water; and the level of petroleum hydrocarbons in Cawelo’s produced water were 750 times below the maximum concentration considered safe for drinking water. What’s more, the third-party environmental toxicologist conducted preliminary crop testing and found that crops irrigated with Cawelo’s produced water had the same chemical composition as crops irrigated with other water supplies. [Emphasis added]

More scienfitic data supporting safety is good news, because we all rely on California’s agriculture industry for food and fiber, so attacks on the beneficial reuse of produced water are especially troubling during our current drought. Indeed, the agriculture industry has never needed water more.

Activists prefer fear-mongering over drought mitigation

None of this has stopped anti-industry activists from attempting to cast doubt on the safety of this well-established program, using fact-...