By October 24, 2016 Read More →

Science confirms oilfield produced water safe for irrigation

produced

Produced water is filtered and treated by Cawelo Source: Comstock’s.

For more than 20 years, Kern County’s Cawelo Water District (Cawelo) has helped farmers offset water shortages by recycling some water brought from the ground (“produced”) during the oil and gas development process in non-hydraulically fractured wells.

The produced water is filtered and treated by Cawelo. The water district then blends it with water from other sources and conducts quality testing before providing it to farmers.

This program has never been more necessary than now, in the midst of California’s record-breaking drought.

New study confirms previous analyses: Treated water is safe for crops

This week, Cawelo released more good news about its ongoing water testing program to ensure the safety of recycled water. Results from a citrus crop study by a third-party environmental toxicologist found that

…organic elements found in produced water are not being absorbed into fruit. This verified a previous water quality study that showed Cawelo’s produced water supply to be safe for agriculture irrigation. [emphasis added]

As Lois Henry of the Bakersfield Californian reported:

“Cawelo voluntarily hired toxicology firm Enviro-Tox to test produce harvested last fall, mostly nuts and grapes at that time of year. Those findings, released last April, showedno difference between nuts and grapes irrigated with water that included the recycled oilfield water and nuts and grapes irrigated by other sources.

This new round of tests involved mandarins, oranges and lemons from 18 different locations, again some irrigated with the oilfield water, some from other sources.

Enviro-Tox looked for nine different chemicals that had been found in Cawelo’s blended irrigation water — at levels lower than drinking waterstandards…

Toxicologists again found no difference between the ‘test’ fruit (irrigated with the blended oilfield water) and ‘control’ fruit (irrigated using other sources.)”[emphasis added]

The testing program is intended to protect public health and to ensure that factual information makes its way to the public. Cawelo went on to note why this highly successful, decades-old program is especially important and beneficial now:

As California grapples with ongoing water shortages and drought, the Governor and state leaders have established water policies that mandate Californians reuse and recycle water whenever possible. Recycling produced water is providing farmers a much-needed additional source of water to irrigate crops and helping protect already depleted groundwater basins. [emphasis added]

You would think that a partnership providing 34,000 acre-feet (10 billion gallons) of treated, safe water to California farmers would be cause for celebration. But instead of celebrating this innovative program, extreme “keep it in the ground” anti-fracking activists have used this success story as yet another excuse to scare their followers with anti-scientific misinformation that is blatantly inaccurate.

Activists hate good news

As Energy In Depth has documented, activists curiously trained their sights on this program in a misguided attempt to halt all oil and gas production, ignoring the consequences that their activities could have on the agriculture industry in the nation’s top agricultural state and belying any pretense that their interest is consumer safety.

  • Actor (and New York resident) Mark Ruffalo is perhaps best known as an opponent of fracking, but he has taken a keen interest in Cawelo even though water generated from fracking is never used for agricultural purposes. Plainly, his broader goal is to shut down oil and gas operations altogether. Ruffalo even created an activist group, Water Defense, and hired a non-scientist as his “chief scientist” to conduct bogus tests to argue for an end to the Cawelo program. (The Huffington Post covered how Water Defense tried similar opportunistic hijinks in the wake of the Flint water crisis.)
  • Of course, fringe environmental group Food and Water Watch was quick to latch-on to Water Defense’s fake science and to call for an end to the highly regarded irrigation program, proving once again that the protection of food and water is far from its highestpriority.
  • Also predictably, Californians Against Fracking has called for the Cawelo program to be shut down, even though there is no fracking fluid whatsoever in the water sent to the Water District.
  • The Center for Biological Diversity, never shy about scaring people using intentionally misleading information, produced a fact-less “fact sheet” that simply ignores the scientific fact that produced water is treated and, as Cawelo reported following its initial study:

“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. [Emphasis added]

To date, CBD has not corrected the record for its members. What CBD lacks in integrity it probably makes up for in fundraising effectiveness.

Conclusion

Not only does the Cawelo program allow a productive use for oilfield-produced water (oil production produces water and oil in an approximately 15:1 ratio) but it allows the farmers who produce our food to mitigate the current unprecedented drought.

This is the very definition of a win-win-win, for California’s agriculture industry, for consumers and for the environment.

The continuously demonstrated safety of the venerable Cawelo water recycling program is great news for all Californians genuinely concerned with the stewardship of our food supply.

It is a shame that activists, who raise money and maintain relevance based on fear and not science, cannot occasionally take a break from industry-bashing to recognize when science shows that they are getting exactly what they claim to want.

Originally posted Oct 21, 2016 at EnergyInDepth

produced

Ph: 432-978-5096 Website: www.mapleleafmarketinginc.com

Posted in: Politics

Comments are closed.