Currently in Production:

“Unplugged: Coming to an Aquifer Near You” is a documentary about Produced Water, a toxic threat you’ve probably never heard of, yet “Big Oil” and gas states are drowning in it.  

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Produced Water is waste generated by the oil and gas industry.  Every barrel of oil that comes out of the ground generates 4-5 barrels of produced water.  

 

Where does it all go? Texas alone generates more than 1 billion gallons of it per day. New Mexico sends another 100 million gallons daily to Texas, where the regulations governing this contaminated wastewater of the oil and gas industry are lenient compared to other states.​  Louisiana trucks it in from the other side. 

 

The “Don’t Mess With” state is getting dumped on from all sides with no currently viable long-term solutions. 

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Why is produced water dangerous?  It's percolating underground in disposal wells, leaking from corroded abandoned wells and pipelines littered across several states, and is spilling onto land and into rivers and streams.

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Sheer volume isn’t the only problem.  Produced Water is 4-10 times saltier than ocean water.  As a drilling byproduct, it also can contain benzene, toluene, xylene, chlorides, and radium…contaminants that have migrated into groundwater in many counties, with more than 200 active cases last year alone in Texas. 

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Just a Texas problem?  When spills reach groundwater, aquifers like the Ogallala, the largest in the United States, could be contaminated... and West Texas sits on top of it. The Ogallala supplies water for 30% of the nation’s irrigation for farmers and ranchers who in turn supply a quarter of the nation’s agriculture.  

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In the film, you’ll meet farmers on their 43rd day of an orphaned well leaking produced water on their land not far from roaming cattle, as well as a rancher who helped the filmmaker collect water samples for lab testing - that is until the crew’s Geiger Counter indicated it was time to leave, with readings beyond 1,000 counts per minute; safe levels are 50 counts or less per minute. You'll also see land turned barren by produced water spills and meet a geochemist who demonstrates how a produced water pit liner "leaks like a sieve;" the pit sits just 17 feet above the Ogallala Aquifer and 500 feet from a children’s camp and its drinking well. 

 

The thread that binds them all is that they love their state and want it to do a better job of addressing this problem.

 

Currently, there are no statewide reporting standards for produced water spills in Texas, and industry operators are not required to notify property owners when spills take place. 

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Unplugged unveils the story through families whose land has suffered the devastating effects and scientists who are trying to find solutions.  Unplugged  hopes to elevate the produced water problem to a national platform and to promote the creation of stricter storage and spill regulations to protect public and ecological health.   My vision is to compel regulators to create a user-friendly database accessible to the public for monitoring produced water spills where and when they happen.