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California Farms Are Using Drilling Wastewater to Grow Crops

posted by janrinok on Sunday July 12 2015, @12:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the every-bit-helps dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

California's epic drought is pushing Big Oil to solve a problem it's struggled with for decades: what to do with the billions of gallons of wastewater that gush out of wells every year.

Golden State drillers have pumped much of that liquid back underground into disposal wells. Now, amid a four-year dry spell, more companies are looking to recycle their water or sell it to parched farms as the industry tries to get ahead of environmental lawsuits and new regulations.

The trend could have implications for oil patches across the country. With fracking boosting the industry's thirst for water, companies have run into conflicts from Texas to Colorado to Pennsylvania. California could be an incubator for conservation efforts that have so far failed to gain traction elsewhere in the U.S.

If you were thinking California's drought might accelerate desalinization technology, you're wrong. It's actually helping the oil and natural gas industries make more money.

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @01:25AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @01:25AM (#208036)

    It's actually helping the oil and natural gas industries make more money.

    What, you have a problem with that?

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @01:34AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @01:34AM (#208039)

    My bad, it's the pheonix666 - dirty commie.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by davester666 on Sunday July 12 2015, @02:29AM

    by davester666 (155) on Sunday July 12 2015, @02:29AM (#208046)

    wonder how many carcinogens are in that wastewater...

    I'm sure none of them will wind up in the plants, or just pollute the soil the water is sprayed over.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @05:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @05:21PM (#208179)

      Plant's are already loaded with carcinogens, and pretty much everything is a carcinogen (it is a pretty much useless term):

      The toxicological significance of exposures to synthetic chemicals is examined in the context of exposures to naturally occurring chemicals. We calculate that 99.99% (by weight) of the pesticides in the US diet are chemicals that plants produce to defend themselves (nature's pesticides). Only 52 of these natural pesticides have been tested in high-dose animal cancer tests, and 27 are rodent carcinogens; these 27 are shown to be present in many common foods. The toxicology of synthetic chemicals is compared to that of natural chemicals, which represent the vast bulk of the chemicals to which humans are exposed. It is argued that animals have a broad array of inducible general defenses to combat the changing array of toxic chemicals in plant food and that these defenses are effective against both natural and synthetic toxins. Synthetic toxins (eg, dioxin) are compared to natural chemicals (eg, indole carbinol [in broccoli] and ethanol). The finding that, in high-dose tests, a high proportion of both natural and synthetic chemicals are carcinogens, mutagens, teratogens, and clastogens (30%-50% for each group) calls into question current efforts to use these tests to protect public health by regulating low doses of synthetic chemicals. The administration of chemicals at the maximum tolerated dose in standard animal cancer tests is postulated to increase cell division (mitogenesis), which in turn increases rates of mutagenesis and, thus, carcinogenesis. The animal data are consistent with this mechanism, because a high proportion--about 50%--of all chemicals tested (whether natural or synthetic) are indeed rodent carcinogens.

      http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1616796 [nih.gov]

      • (Score: 2) by davester666 on Monday July 13 2015, @12:59AM

        by davester666 (155) on Monday July 13 2015, @12:59AM (#208279)

        Of course. What could go wrong. Totally the same stuff. What's been in the plants we've eaten for thousands of years and the various substances in well waste water.

        You can bet the oil company CEO's don't live around where they are going to do this, and they won't drink the water, and they won't eat the food grown there.