Inspectors Uncover Polluting Oil Wastewater Pits in Kern County | Care2 Causes
Inspectors Uncover Polluting Oil Wastewater Pits in Kern County | Care2 Causes
http://www.care2.com/causes/inspectors-uncover-polluting-oil-wastewater-pits-in-kern-county.html
Tossing a cigarette butt on the ground and heedlessly walking away is an environmental no-no, but energy companies in Kern County, Calif., are doing the equivalent of just that, only on an industrial scale. Environmental inspectors are finding massive illegal waste pits filled with byproducts of oil production, and they’re not secured, creating pollution in the already embattled county. Investigators estimate that some 300 pits in the county are operating without permits, http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-water-board-planning-to-address-illicit-oil-wastewater-pits-20150227-story.html polluting groundwater and creating a significant and potentially expensive environmental hazard. What might be even more scary, if you can imagine it, is the lax inspection and enforcement that allowed oil companies to rampantly construct pits — and the limited regulations surrounding the environmental requirements for wastewater pits.
In the course of oil and gas production, particularly in the case of fracking, vast quantities of wastewater are produced. Theoretically, this water can’t simply be discharged, because it contains toxic byproducts like benzene. Oil companies are responsible for environmental remediation and disposal, but this is expensive — so many settle for digging out wastewater pits and just storing that water. That’s perfectly legal, as long as they get permits. Disturbingly, the laws for permits are quite lax — public officials aren’t picky about their position, for example, and they don’t even need to be lined or covered to prevent release of wastewater into the water table or the air.
In terms of agricultural income, Kern County is the second-highest ranking county in the nation, illustrating the huge volume of crops grown there. Wastewater seeping into the ground creates serious potential risks for crop production, including blights and crop failures as well as issues for consumers who could get sick from benzene-soaked plants irrigated with contaminated water. Likewise, Kern County accounts for an estimated 80 percent of California’s oil production, illustrating the huge scale of the industry. Thus, in precisely the same county the state counts on for crop production, a highly polluting industry is also thriving, and it’s not behaving in an environmentally responsible fashion. http://www.modbee.com/news/business/article11361773.html
Oil companies insist the pits were all legal or that they didn’t know about procedures they needed to follow. Some also add claims that no one can link the county’s pollution to unsecured oil pits, but farmers say otherwise. They claim to have smelled oil products around their farms, and some have identified signs of oil contamination in their irrigation supplies. They want action to increase environmental health and safety standards around oil wastewater pits, and to penalize the companies involved.
The issue also raises another problem: Remediation. http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/news/local/Oil-companies-dispute-waste-water-report-294457501.html The county’s water quality officials are going to be left picking up the tab for identifying, cleaning up, and controlling unpermitted and polluting pits if they can’t explicitly link them to specific oil companies. Even if they can, they will likely spend years in court fighting expensive lawsuits to compel companies to pay, during which they’ll need to initiate cleanup operations regardless to prevent environmental damage. Similar issues can be seen across the United States, where industrial pollution creates an expensive problem for environmental agencies while its originators metaphorically skip town, profits in hand.
Kern County is facing a lengthy investigation to evaluate each and every single oil pit to determine whether it has a permit and whether it is creating pollution. At the same time, the county needs to engage in environmental cleanup and chase down the oil companies who left their wastewater behind while it weighs the possibility of stricter health and safety requirements for future wastewater pits. Other regions of oil and gas production, meanwhile, might want to conduct a survey of their wastewater pits to see if they’re looking at a similar problem.
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