Oil and water don’t mix with California agriculture

Controversy in Kern County indicates problems for the oil industry’s future worldwide

By Jeremy Miller, From the December 06, 2010 issue of High Country News KERN COUNTY, CALIFORNIA From the “Petroleum Highway” — a rutted, dusty stretch of California State Route 33 — you can see the jostling armies of two giant industries. To the east, relentless rows of almonds and pistachios march to the horizon. To the west, an armada of oil wells sweeps to the foothills of the Temblor Range. Fred Starrh, who farms along this industrial front, has seen firsthand what can happen when agriculture collides with oil. On an overcast February day, he drives his mother-of-pearl Lincoln Town Car down a dirt road through his orchards. Starrh Farms has 6,000 acres of pistachios, cotton, almonds and alfalfa. Starrh proudly points out almond trees planted 155 to the acre with the aid of lasers and GPS. At the edge of his land, he pulls up beside 20-foot-high earthen berms, the ramparts of large “percolation” ponds that belong to a neighbor, Aera Energy. From the mid-1970s to the early 2000s, Aera dumped more than 2.4 billion barrels (or just over 100 billion gallons) of wastewater — known in the industry as “produced water” — from its North Belridge oilfield into those unlined ponds, Starrh says. The impact became apparent beginning in 1999, when Starrh dug several wells to augment the irrigation water he gets from the California Aqueduct. He mixed the groundwater with aqueduct water, applied it to a cotton field beside the berms — and the plants wilted. Eventually, the well water killed almond trees, Starrh says; he points out a few that look like gray skeletons. Starrh suspected that Aera’s ponds were leaking pollutants. So he tested his well water and found high concentrations of chloride and boron along with detectable radiation — common constituents of the oil industry’s produced water. He took Aera — a joint venture of Shell and ExxonMobil — to court, and in the nine years of legal wrangling that followed, Aera was forced to disclose its practices. The state’s regional water-quality control board ordered the company to stop dumping into the ponds, and Aera launched a cleanup of the site. Last January, a Kern County jury awarded Starrh $8.5 million in damages and by October, the ponds had been demolished. But Starrh has appealed that court decision, saying he’ll need as much as $2 billion to rehabilitate his land and construct terraced ponds to “flush” his soil and groundwater of toxins. The oil company should be “punished,” says Starrh. “If you just hit them with a small fine, it becomes just a small expense of doing business.” Many local farmers face the same risk, Starrh believes. Kern County belies the old adage: Out here, oil and water do mix — and they do so in staggering volumes. Moreover, Kern County’s oilfields are a preview of the future of oil worldwide. The industry is moving further into the realm of “unconventional” fuels — including tar sands, shale oil and “heavy oil,” like the oil found here. But heavy oil requires the use and disposal of huge amounts of water. And the consequences are strewn across the local landscape. …

Oil and Water Don’t Mix with California Agriculture