Sat, Jul 04, 2015 page13

• Central California farmers using oil industry waste water to irrigate crops

  • AFP, BAKERSFIELD, California
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  An efficient solution to a historic drought, or an environmentally risky pact with the devil?

  That was the question being raised by critics about Californian farmers who irrigate their crops with waste water supplied by oil companies, in an arrangement slammed as dangerous by environmental campaigners.

  Driving into the parched region around Bakersfield, in California’s fertile Central Valley, it is evident how closely the agriculture and oil industries are related.

  Lines of orchards stand near fields of oil wells stretched out as far as the eye can see.

  Eighty percent of the state’s oil production and 45 percent of the farming industry is concentrated in a single area, Kern County, the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment’s Madeline Stano said.

  With temperatures frequently exceeding 40oC in the summer, water is in scarce supply.

  After four years of record drought, farmers can no longer pump water from rivers whose levels are dangerously low.

  Drawing from the water table is also increasingly difficult: More than 1,000 wells have dried up in the region.

  In a bid to diversify supplies, the Cawelo Water District, a cooperative financed by local farmers, has for 20 years used waste water from oil companies.

  Chevron Corp spokeswoman Abby Auffant said that crude comes out of the ground mixed with water, from which it must be separated.

  Separating the water from the crude is a process that actually benefits oil firms, according to Stano.

  “It’s hard for the oil industry to get rid of, so it’s a win-win for the oil companies” when they are able to sell the water, she said.

  Chevron’s Kern River operation sells about 500,000 barrels of waste water per day to the Cawelo Water District, which currently gets 50 percent of its supplies from the oil company.

  The water is cleaned by a filtering system and piped to a reservoir, where it is combined with supplies from other neighboring oil plants, before being mixed with fresh water and then distributed to about 90 local farms and vineyards.

  The farmers pay about US$33 per 1,233m3, compared with up to US$1,500 for the same quantity of fresh water, Cawelo head David Ansolabehere said.

  The practice is entirely legal: Chevron and rivals including Occidental Petroleum Corporation have a permit to sell the water. They have it tested by a third-party firm and then supply the results to California authorities.

  “We’re in compliance with all the testing requirements,” Auffant said. “There’s a petrochemical content in our ... permit and we have always met and been under it.”

  However, environmentalists do not see it the same way.

  “It’s an experiment that the state of California and the oil industry performs without consumer consent,” Stano said.

  “In Chevron’s own report we found benzene and acetone, which are carcinogenic,” in the water sold to farmers, she said, claiming that the tests also fail to detect other dangerous chemicals.

  “There has been a gentleman’s agreement to promote deregulation,” she added.

  Santo denounced a “lack of state enforcement and oversight [and] blind faith in the industries for a long time.”

  Scott Smith of the Water Defense lobby group, founded by actor Mark Ruffalo, also criticized the testing methods, which he called “outdated.”

  “Chevron should be interested in partnering with more than just their complicit customer [Cawelo Water District] to protect health, community, environment and water resources,” he said.

  Almonds, grapes and other agricultural produce are not evaluated apart from their pesticide content, Ansolabehere admitted.

  He noted that Californian authorities have decided to form a working group that could order tests on farm produce, after a Chevron report showed salinity which Ansolabehere admitted “was a bit high.”
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