Any climate action plan that wants to quickly turn the tide of global warming has to tackle methane, which traps orders of magnitude more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide in the first years after it’s emitted. For this reason, the Environmental Protection Agency recently required oil and gas drillers to monitor for leaks of the potent greenhouse gas — and fix them immediately if they’re found. The new regulations also empower community groups and environmental advocates to report fossil fuel companies if they can provide evidence of leaks themselves. 

However, none of these requirements apply to one of the largest sources of human-caused methane emissions in the U.S.: landfills. As food waste and other organic matter decompose, they generate methane and other noxious gases. As a result, landfills are responsible for nearly a fifth of the country’s methane emissions, but almost half of U.S. landfills have not installed gas-capture systems, nor are they required to. In fact, emissions from many smaller landfills are not regulated by the EPA at all. For those that are subject to regulation — because of their size and estimated toxic emissions — landfill operators are required to walk around their facility’s perimeter and take methane measurements every 100 feet four times a year.

There are more than 2,600 landfills across the country, and they leak the equivalent of 287 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year into the air — a volume comparable to that which would result from operating 74 coal plants. A recent study by Carbon Mapper, a nonprofit that operates methane-detecting satellites, found methane emissions from landfills are 40 percent higher than previously estimated by the EPA.

“Landfills were actually found to be worse than oil and gas in the sense that when methane plumes happen, they’re more persistent,” said Katherine Blauvelt, a campaign director at Industrious Labs, an environmental organization working to decarbonize heavy industries. “If there was a canary in the coal mine, it’d be dead.”

Despite this, new federal regulations do not yet appear to be on the horizon. The EPA last revised regulations to reduce methane emissions from landfills in 2016. And while the agency is nearing an August 2024 statutory deadline to begin reviewing existing standards, it hasn’t initiated a new rulemaking process yet. (EPA representatives did not immediately respond to Grist’s request for comment on Monday.)

Last year, Industrious Labs obtained EPA inspection reports for four landfills in Oregon and Washington. The group found that inspectors reported dozens of instances when methane levels exceeded the EPA’s limit of 500 parts per million. In a follow-up report published last week, Industrious Labs broadened its analysis and examined inspection reports for landfills in an additional six states. The findings were alarming. The group found that nearly half of the inspections showed methane levels above the EPA’s threshold — even though, in many cases, landfill operators themselves had recently assured the agency of their compliance. 

“That’s where you immediately say to yourself, ‘Something is wrong with the system,’” said Blauvelt. “The landfill operators are being set up to fail if they’re missing these large methane leaks.”

Blauvelt added that operators should opt for aerial monitoring technology such as drones and satellites, which can provide more accurate coverage, rather than the quarterly ground-level measurements that are the current standard. 

Meanwhile, residents who live near landfills are battling nasty odors and explosions. In Southern California, an underground fire at Chiquita Canyon landfill has produced noxious fumes and contaminated runoff for the last two years. In Berkeley, explosive levels of methane were detected at a shuttered landfill beneath a park. 

Joel Geier became very familiar with the nauseating odors associated with these sites in 2005, when he moved into his house less than half a mile from Coffin Butte Landfill near Corvallis, Oregon. Most days the wind blows away from his home, but on the days that the wind blows south, he’s hit with a “toxic chemical smell,” he told Grist, along with a “sour decomposition-type smell.”

Geier is a hydrogeologist, and he has been closely tracking the flow of runoff from the landfill. In recent years, high levels of arsenic have been found in monitoring wells around Coffin Butte. When it rains, water seeps through the landfill, reacting with the various chemicals it encounters on the way. The resulting brew is called leachate, and it can end up in groundwater and contaminate water wells that residents like Geier rely on. (Representatives from Coffin Butte Landfill did not immediately respond to Grist’s request for comment on Monday.)

Leachate also interferes with methane collection systems. Buried inside landfills are perforated pipes that trap and treat gases before they can escape and pollute the atmosphere. Coffin Butte collects about 30 million gallons of leachate a year. When EPA inspectors visited the dump in recent years, they observed that methane levels exceeded the agency’s 500-parts-per-million regulatory threshold at the leachate cleanout locations. Gas buildup was sometimes so high that inspectors noted that some tarped areas of the landfill were visibly inflated.

Blauvelt is hopeful that, when the EPA issues new landfill rules, it will borrow from its strategy for the oil and gas industry. By tackling methane, the Biden administration can reduce planet-warming emissions and improve living conditions for communities across the country, she said: “It’s an issue that has a lot of wins attached to it, if they choose to act.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Landfills leak methane with impunity, new research shows on May 21, 2024.

In natural landscapes, rainwater and snowmelt filter down into the ground slowly. This slow infiltration…

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A keystone species, bison once roamed the American Great Plains in the tens of millions, but were hunted to near extinction.

Bison are known as ecosystem engineers because they perform many services for the habitats in which they live, like rolling around and packing down soil in wallows that collect rainwater and grazing on different heights of grasses, which provide birds with nesting grounds.

A new study by researchers from Yale University and Memorial University of Newfoundland has found that a herd of 170 bison being reintroduced to the Țarcu mountains of Romania could help sequester carbon dioxide emissions equal to removing at least 43,000 gas-powered cars from United States roads for one year, reported The Guardian.

“Most carbon cycle models do not consider animal-mediated effects, focusing instead on carbon exchanges among plants, microbes, and the atmosphere. Yet, a growing body of empirical evidence from diverse ecosystems points to pervasive animal effects on ecosystem carbon cycling and shows that ignoring them could lead to misrepresentation of an ecosystem’s carbon cycle,” the study said.

More than two centuries ago, Romania lost its last European bison. However, in 2014 the species was reintroduced to the Carpathian mountains by WWF Romania and Rewilding Europe, The Guardian reported. The 100 who were brought to the Tarcu mountains have grown to more than 170 — one of the biggest free-roaming bison populations on the European continent. The landscape can accommodate as many as 350 to 450 individuals.

For the study, the researchers used a model developed at the Yale School for the Environment. It calculates how much atmospheric carbon wildlife assists in capturing and storing in soils through their ecosystem interactions.

“Bison influence grassland and forest ecosystems by grazing grasslands evenly, recycling nutrients to fertilise the soil and all of its life, dispersing seeds to enrich the ecosystem, and compacting the soil to prevent stored carbon from being released,” said professor Oswald Schmitz, lead author of the study and a professor of population and community ecology at Yale University, as reported by The Guardian.

The herd of 170 graze in a grasslands area of nearly 19.3 square miles inside the wider Țarcu mountain range. The research team found that the bison could potentially capture another 59,525 tons of carbon annually.

The team said the number corresponds with the amount of annual carbon dioxide released by an average of at least 43,000 gas-powered cars in the U.S., or 123,000 in Europe, due to their increased energy efficiency.

“These creatures evolved for millions of years with grassland and forest ecosystems, and their removal, especially where grasslands have been ploughed up, has led to the release of vast amounts of carbon. Restoring these ecosystems can bring back balance, and ‘rewilded’ bison are some of the climate heroes that can help achieve this,” Schmitz said.

When bison browse and graze, it helps with the maintenance of a biodiverse landscape of scrub, grasslands, forests and microhabitats.

Their return to the Țarcu has inspired eco-businesses and tourism centered around rewilding.

Schmitz explained that the climate and soil conditions of the Carpathian mountain grasslands are specific, so bison’s impacts might not be the same in other locations around the world, such as prairies in the U.S., which are much less productive.

“This research opens up a whole new raft of options for climate policymakers around the world. Until now, nature protection and restoration has largely been treated as another challenge and cost that we need to face alongside the climate emergency. This research shows we can address both challenges: we can bring back nature through rewilding and this will draw down vast amounts of carbon, helping to stabilise the global climate,” said Magnus Sylvén, Global Rewilding Alliance’s director of science policy practice, as The Guardian reported.

The team explored the details of nine species — including sea otters, musk oxen and tropical forest elephants — and have started looking into others.

“Many of them show similar promise to these bison, often doubling an ecosystem’s capacity to draw down and store carbon, and sometimes much more. This really is a policy option with massive potential,” Schmitz said, as reported by The Guardian.

The study, “Rewiring the Carbon Cycle: A Theoretical Framework for Animal-Driven Ecosystem Carbon Sequestration,” was published in the journal JGR Biogeosciences.

The post Reintroduction of 170 European Bison Could Help Remove CO2 Equivalent of 43,000 Cars, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

The adorable otter is North America’s smallest marine mammal, as well as the largest species of the weasel family, which also includes skunks, badgers and wolverines.

With roughly 3,000 southern sea otters left in California, they are listed as threatened under the United States Endangered Species Act and play a crucial role in the restoration of the state’s damaged kelp forests, a press release from UT Austin said.

A new study by a team of researchers from Monterey Bay Aquarium; University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz); The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin); and elsewhere has found that otters who use tools like rocks and shells to break open the thick outer layers of mollusks are able to eat bigger prey, giving them higher rates of energy consumption while reducing wear on their teeth.

According to Chris Law — a UT Austin postdoctoral researcher who was the study’s lead author while a UC Santa Cruz graduate student — sea otters prefer to eat abalone and sea urchins, which are relatively easy to break apart, but those delicacies are declining, reported The Guardian.

The researchers said that, due to the absence of their preferred foods, sea otters often look for clams, mussels, marine snails and crabs. However, the snails’ hard shells can be damaging to their teeth.

“There’s fishing and habitat destruction, so their favorite prey are gone and they have to switch to alternative preys,” Law said, as The Guardian reported. “What we found is that [using tools] actually allows them to switch to those prey.”

The research team enlisted volunteers to track 196 southern sea otters off the California coast to gain a better understanding of how they use tools in a habitat that is changing quickly, the press release said. The team monitored tool use and linked it to the otters’ dental health and dietary patterns.

They found that using the tools meant less tooth injuries.

“Sea otters vary in how often they use tools,” Law said in the press release. “The females are likely using tools to overcome their smaller body size and weaker biting ability in order to meet their calorie demands. Raising pups takes a lot of energy, and the females need to be efficient in their foraging. The study shows that tool use is an important behavior for survival.”

The study, “Tool use increases mechanical foraging success and tooth health in southern sea otters (Enhydra lutris nereis),” was published in the journal Science.

While using tools widened the availability of different types of prey for both female and male otters, the researchers found that female otters had less damage to their teeth. It is more likely for female otters to use tools, research has shown, and the new study found that those who did had access to larger or harder prey than those who did not. The researchers found that females were able to eat prey that were as much as 35 percent harder in comparison with males who used tools.

Females of other species, such as chimpanzees, bonobos and dolphins, have also been known to utilize tools more often than males. Females of these species tend to raise their offspring and are the ones who pass down their tool-using behavior.

“This behavior really allows them to eat other prey items and in an environment where that’s depleted. It really just showcases how it’s important for their overall survival. If there are no urchins and abalone for them to eat and they are faced with other prey types they can’t open, they can’t survive,” Law said, as reported by The Guardian.

The post Sea Otters Use Tools to Break Open Larger Prey, Sparing Their Teeth, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

Researchers at the University of New Mexico have found concentrations of microplastics in the testicular tissue of humans and dogs. The findings raise concerns over how these particles can impact the reproductive system.

The project started when study lead Xiaozhong Yu, a professor at the university’s College of Nursing, spoke with colleague Matthew Campen, professor at the university’s College of Pharmacy, about environmental factors impacting sperm count and quality. Campen had previously revealed the presence of microplastics in human placentas.

Yu led a team of researchers who replicated the method used in Campen’s research to analyze testicle tissue samples obtained for testing from the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator and from animal shelters and veterinary clinics in Albuquerque, as the University of New Mexico reported.

They used advanced sensitive Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) to detect and measure the presence of microplastics. “Our study revealed the presence of microplastics in all human and canine testes,” Yu said.

They found 12 different types of microplastics in testicular tissue samples of 23 humans and 47 dogs. The scientists published their findings in the journal Toxicological Sciences.

Not only did the researchers find evidence of microplastics in the testicular tissue samples, but they also found them at higher concentrations than the average concentrations found in tissues from placenta samples in Campen’s study.

“At the beginning, I doubted whether microplastics could penetrate the reproductive system,” Yu said. “When I first received the results for dogs I was surprised. I was even more surprised when I received the results for humans.”

The study authors noted an average concentration of 122.63 micrograms in canine testes and 329.44 micrograms in human testes. The most common type of microplastic found in both the human and dog tissue samples was polyethylene (PE), although the researchers noted no correlation between PE concentrations in the dogs’ tissue samples with lower sperm count. They did, however, find a link between higher PVC concentrations in the canine samples with lower sperm count.

“The plastic makes a difference – what type of plastic might be correlated with potential function,” Yu explained. “PVC can release a lot of chemicals that interfere with spermatogenesis and it contains chemicals that cause endocrine disruption.”

As the Center for Environmental Health, which was not part of the study, reported, PVC is often treated with chemicals like phthalates and bisphenol-A (BPA) to make it less brittle, but the additives can pose health risks, including risks to hormones.

Yu pointed out that the study findings are not meant to scare anyone, but they can help increase awareness and help the public make more informed decisions and try to avoid microplastics.

“We need to really look at what the potential long-term effect,” Yu said. “Are microplastics one of the factors contributing to this decline?”

The post Scientists Detect Microplastics in Testicular Tissue appeared first on EcoWatch.

IKEA is a global retail and furniture giant that has grown up with the modern…

The post Earth911 Podcast: IKEA’s Mardi Ditze On Retailing’s Path To The Circular Economy appeared first on Earth911.

Is bottled water really “natural” if it’s contaminated with microplastics? A series of lawsuits recently filed against six bottled water brands claim that it’s deceptive to use labels like “100 percent mountain spring water” and “natural spring water” — not because of the water’s provenance, but because it is likely tainted with tiny plastic fragments.

Reasonable consumers, the suits allege, would read those labels and assume bottled water to be totally free of contaminants; if they knew the truth, they might not have bought it. “Plaintiff would not have purchased, and/or would not have paid a price premium” for bottled water had they known it contained “dangerous substances,” reads the lawsuit filed against the bottled water company Poland Spring. 

The six lawsuits target the companies that own Arrowhead, Crystal Geyser, Evian, Fiji, Ice Mountain, and Poland Spring.  They are variously seeking damages for lost money, wasted time, and “stress, aggravation, frustration, loss of trust, loss of serenity, and loss of confidence in product labeling.”

Experts aren’t sure it’s a winning legal strategy, but it’s a creative new approach for consumers hoping to protect themselves against the ubiquity of microplastics. Research over the past several years has identified these particles — fragments of plastic less than 5 millimeters in diameter — just about everywhere, in nature and in people’s bodies. Studies have linked them to an array of health concerns, including heart disease, reproductive problems, metabolic disorder, and, in one recent landmark study, an increased risk of death from any cause.

Of the six class-action lawsuits, five were filed earlier this year by the law firm of Todd M. Friedman, a consumer protection and employment firm with locations in California, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The sixth was filed by the firm Ahdoot & Wolfson on behalf of a New York City resident.

Each lawsuit uses the same general argument to make its case, beginning with research on the prevalence of microplastics in bottled water. Several of them cite a 2018 study from Orb Media and the State University of New York in Fredonia that found microplastic contamination in 93 percent of bottles tested across 11 brands in nine countries. In half of the brands tested, researchers found more than 1,000 pieces of microplastic per liter. (A standard bottle can hold about half a liter of water.) More recent research has found that typical water bottles have far higher levels: 240,000 particles per liter on average, taking into account smaller fragments known as “nanoplastics.”

The complaints then go on to argue that bottled water contaminated with microplastics cannot be “natural,” as implied by product labels like “natural artisan water” (Fiji), “100 percent natural spring water” (Poland Spring), and “natural spring water” (Evian). The suit against Poland Spring cites a dictionary definition of natural as “existing in or caused by nature; not made or caused by humankind.” That lawsuit and the others also point to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which does not strictly regulate the use of the word “natural” but has “a longstanding policy” of considering the term to mean a food is free from synthetic or artificial additives “that would not normally be expected to be in that food.”.

The lawsuit against Arrowhead bottled water, advertised as “100 percent mountain spring water,” argues that it’s the “100 percent” that’s deceptive. “Reasonable consumers do not understand the term ‘100 percent’ to mean ‘99 percent,’ ‘98 percent,’ ‘97 percent,’ or any other percentage except for ‘100 percent,’” the complaint reads. In other words, consumers expect a product that’s labeled as 100 percent water to contain exactly 0 percent microplastics.

Are reasonable consumers really taking labels so literally? Jeff Sovern, a professor of consumer protection law at the University of Maryland, said it’s “plausible” that people would expect bottled water labeled as “natural” to not contain non-natural microplastics, but it’s hard to say without conducting a survey. It will be up to judges to evaluate that argument — if the cases go to trial. One of the lawsuits filed by the firm of Todd M. Friedman against the company that owns Crystal Geyser was withdrawn last month, potentially a sign that the parties reached a settlement.

“A lot of these types of cases get settled,” said Laura Smith, legal director of the nonprofit Truth in Advertising, Inc. This may reflect the strength of the plaintiffs’ arguments, or it could reflect a company’s desire to avoid the expense of going to court.

In response to Grist’s request for comment, Evian — owned by Danone — said it could not comment on active litigation, but that it “denies the allegations and will vigorously defend itself in the lawsuit.” 

“Microplastics and nanoplastics are found throughout the environment in our soil, air, and water, and their presence is a complex and evolving area of science,” a spokesperson told Grist, adding that the FDA has not issued regulations for nano- or microplastic particles in food and beverage products.

The companies named in the other lawsuits — BlueTriton Brands Inc., CG Roxane LLC, and The Wonderful Co. LLC — did not respond to requests for comment.

Erica Cirino, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Plastic Pollution Coalition, said the new lawsuits are part of a longstanding effort to hold bottled water companies accountable not only for microplastic contamination, but also for other misleading claims about their products’ purity. A lawsuit against Nestlé in 2017 said its “Pure Life Purified” brand name and labels misrepresented the purity of its water, in violation of the California Legal Remedies Act. That case was dismissed in 2019 for a “failure to allege a cognizable legal theory”; the latest lawsuits’ “natural” claims represent a different tactic.

Perhaps the best-known legal challenges have involved the origin of so-called “spring water.” In 2017, for example, a class-action lawsuit against Nestlé Waters North America, which owned Poland Spring at the time, said the company was fooling customers into buying “ordinary groundwater.” A U.S. district court judge dismissed that suit in 2018 on the grounds that its allegations improperly cited violations of a state law, rather than a federal one. Nestlé settled a similar lawsuit in 2003 for $10 million, though it denied that its practices had been deceptive.

More recent lawsuits have taken aim at bottled water companies’ claims that their products are “carbon neutral,” or that their bottles are “100 percent recyclable.” Only 9 percent of plastics worldwide ever get recycled. 

Many of these lawsuits have yet to be evaluated by a judge, although a 2021 complaint against Niagara Bottling over “100 percent recyclable” labels was tossed out by a U.S. district court judge in New York in the following year.

According to Smith, one hurdle for these lawsuits is that they’re only able to cite research on the microplastics’ potential to damage people’s health, rather than actual damages that they’ve suffered from drinking contaminated bottled water. Even if the plaintiffs did have health problems linked to microplastics, these particles are ubiquitous; it would be nearly impossible to isolate the effects from drinking microplastics in bottled water from those of microplastics found everywhere else.

“It’s a wider systemic issue with our entire food and beverage supply,” Cirino said.

Keeping microplastics out of people’s bodies would require a similarly systemic approach, potentially involving government rules and incentives for companies to replace single-use plastics with reusables made from glass and aluminum — as well as an overall reduction in the amount of plastic the world makes. In the meantime, one recent article in The Dieline floated the idea of putting microplastics warning labels on plastic water bottles. 

Of course, anyone worried about drinking plastic could turn to tap water, which typically has lower concentrations of microplastics and other contaminants, and is hundreds of times cheaper than water from a plastic bottle. Research suggests that more than 96 percent of the United States’ community water systems meet government standards for potability.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Bottled water is full of microplastics. Is it still ‘natural’? on May 20, 2024.

A vegan diet may be the single most effective way for individuals to minimize their…

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The first sign of trouble bubbled up from gopher holes a stone’s throw from Stan Ledgerwood’s front door. The salt water left an oily sheen on the soil and a swath of dead grass in the yard.

It was June 2017, and Ledgerwood and his wife, Tina, had recently built a home on the family farm, 230 acres of green amidst the rolling hills and long horizons of south-central Oklahoma. There they planned to spend their retirement, close to Stan’s parents on land that has been in the family since 1920.

The view from the porch took in Stan’s parents’ house, two rows of pecan trees his great-grandfather had planted in the 1930s, and the forest shielding the Washita River, a muddy brown ribbon flowing along the southern edge of the farm. The nearest town, Maysville, has a population of 1,087.

“The only people who come down our road are either lost or the mailman,” said Stan, a husky man with a biting sense of humor.

Also visible from the porch was metal piping in a red-gated enclosure: an aging oil well.

Like many property owners in this rural farming community, the Ledgerwoods own their land but only a meager percentage of the oil beneath it. Pump jacks nod up and down in nearby fields of soybeans and alfalfa.

Stan’s 84-year-old parents, Don and Shirley Ledgerwood, have watched oil companies drill multiple wells on their farm, where the family had grown crops and run cattle. The family received small royalty payments from the oil production. And decades later, they had to allow a wastewater pipe to cross the farm when another company, Southcreek Petroleum Co. LLC, redrilled the well behind the red gate. The well, which plunged about 9,000 feet into the earth, was repurposed to inject salt water into the geologic formation and push any remaining oil up to other wells.

A new production boom never materialized for Southcreek in this slice of Garvin County, and the family didn’t hear much from the oil company.

“When they were through here,” Don said, “we thought we were finished with the oil business.”

But then a corroded valve malfunctioned underground, injecting brine into the soil, according to a report by a Southcreek contractor.

A few days after the release was discovered in June 2017, Stan met with Southcreek and the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency. At the meeting, the company characterized the incident as a “small spill,” the Ledgerwoods later alleged in court. It was unclear how long the leak lasted, but the saltwater plume had already saturated the soil and killed 2 acres of vegetation by the time it broke the surface, according to state oil regulators.

Samples analyzed a month later by Oklahoma State University found that the soil’s concentration of chloride, which occurs in the type of salt water injected into the well, had risen to more than 12 times the state’s acceptable level and was “sufficiently high to reduce yield of even salt tolerant crops.”

Other tests showed that chloride levels in the family’s water well had spiked to more than five times what the Environmental Protection Agency deems safe. The tests didn’t look for other contaminants like heavy metals that are often left behind by the oil production process.

The Ledgerwoods entered a grim limbo, wondering what toxins might be in the cloudy water coming from their faucets and waiting for someone to address the problem.

They experienced firsthand the policy failures that have allowed the oil and gas industry to reap profits without ensuring there will be money to clean up drill sites when the wells run dry and the drillers flee. A recent ProPublica and Capital and Main investigation found a shortfall of about $150 billion between funds set aside to plug wells in major oil-producing states and the true cost of doing so. When the Ledgerwoods later sought to hold the drillers accountable, the family learned how easily oil companies can use bankruptcy to leave their mess to landowners.

Don began traveling 30 miles round-trip to Walmart to buy bottled water. Stan and Tina’s steel pots rusted after being washed, and their 2-year-old great-niece’s skin became irritated and inflamed after repeatedly washing her hands while they potty-trained her. In a text message, the girl’s mother described her hands as looking like they had “a burn.”

Southcreek did not respond to ProPublica and Capital & Main’s requests for comment. In court, the company denied calling the release “small” and argued that the groundwater contamination was contained to the two impacted acres the state identified.

The Ledgerwoods watched in horror as the farm that represented their past and their hope for the future languished. Somehow it had to be fixed, they believed. The rest of the family had also considered retiring to the farm, said Steve Ledgerwood, Stan’s brother and a lawyer in nearby Norman, but that plan was going up in smoke.

“We’ve gone out and made our living and done what we were supposed to do, and we wanted to have a relaxed, peaceful life,” Steve said. “And it has been anything but that.”

“Our only source of fresh water”

The Ledgerwoods and other farmers in Garvin and McClain counties started worrying the moment the oil industry returned in 2012.

Southcreek and other oil companies wanted to resume extraction from the oil field underlying Maysville. But the reservoir was old, so they proposed flooding it with water to force the oil to the surface. Don Ledgerwood and other local farmers signed a petition beseeching the Corporation Commission to reject the companies’ plans.

“This aquifer is our only source of fresh water for our homes, families and livestock,” the farmers wrote. “We fear that any error in development and production could lead to devastating contamination to this critical freshwater supply.”

As is common in American oil fields, property rights in this part of Oklahoma often create split estates, where one person owns the land while another owns the underlying minerals, such as oil and gas. The owner of the minerals has a right to drill, even if the landowner would prefer they didn’t.

The farmers didn’t sway the Corporation Commission, and in 2014, Southcreek redrilled the well on the Ledgerwoods’ land. The company was small but produced about $4 million worth of oil and gas from the area, adjusted for inflation, according to an analysis of Oklahoma Tax Commission data.

State regulators are supposed to minimize the risks that accompany oil and gas production, including by mandating that drillers plug old wells to prevent them from leaking greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or leaching toxic chemicals into the land and water.

In theory, cleanup is guaranteed by financial instruments called bonds that companies fund and that regulators can put toward the cost of retiring wells if drillers go bankrupt or walk away. Sufficient bonding creates an incentive for companies to plug their own wells: Once the work is completed, the company gets its bond back. But when bonding requirements are lax, there’s little to deter drillers from forfeiting their bonds and leaving their wells as “orphans.”

Oklahoma allows companies to cover an unlimited number of wells with a single $25,000 bond. Alternatively, companies can satisfy bonding requirements by proving they are worth at least $50,000, in which case they often do not have to set aside any real money in bonds. Corporation Commission spokesperson Matt Skinner said the agency was unable to find a single case where the state recouped enough money to plug a well from companies that relied solely on the latter option.

To cover all of its roughly 30 wells, Southcreek held a $25,000 bond and filed paperwork to show it was worth at least $50,000. (Different agencies disagree on how many wells Southcreek operated.)

The well that spoiled the Ledgerwoods’ drinking water is one of the 18,500 that the Corporation Commission classifies as orphaned. “We would not be surprised to see that number go higher,” Skinner said. State taxpayers will ultimately be on the hook to plug many of them, or the state can leave the wells unplugged, but many will continue leaking.

Some orphan well cleanup in Oklahoma is funded by a voluntary 0.1 percent fee paid by industry on the sale of oil and natural gas. The Oklahoma Energy Resources Board spent $156 million of the funds collected from this fee over the past three decades. The state has an additional orphan well fund with several million dollars in it.

But Oklahoma has more than 260,000 unplugged wells — behind only Texas — according to data from energy industry software firm Enverus. To plug and clean up the state’s wells could cost approximately $7.3 billion, according to an analysis of state records. Oklahoma has just $45 million in bonds.

The oil industry’s bonds are “shockingly inadequate,” said Peter Morgan, a Sierra Club senior attorney. “It’s clear that abandoning wells and leaving communities and taxpayers to foot the bill to clean them up is baked into the oil and gas industry business model.”

At the Capitol in Oklahoma City, which features repurposed oil derricks outside its main entrance, Republican state Rep. Brad Boles has tried for several years to address the shortfall. This year, he introduced a bill to create a tiered bonding system based on the number of wells a company operates, increasing the highest required bond to $150,000.

“We have a huge liability in our state that we’re trying to get better control of,” he said, acknowledging that his bill would only be a partial solution. “It’s a lot better than it was, but it’s nowhere near where we need to be.”

The Oklahoma House of Representatives and a Senate committee both passed it unanimously, but the bill didn’t receive a vote on the Senate floor. Boles pledged to run a similar bill next session.

“They’re doing you a favor if they clean up”

Shortly after the 2017 brine release, Southcreek began cleaning up with funds from an insurance policy. Fox Hollow Consultants Inc., an environmental consulting firm working with Southcreek, warned in a report that “the remediation of ground water impacted by saltwater is at best a difficult undertaking, costly, and often not effective.”

A stream of trucks rumbled down the Ledgerwoods’ once-quiet gravel road as workers removed enough dirt to fill 750 dump trucks and pumped more than 71,000 gallons from the Ledgerwoods’ water well.

But the dangerous concentrations of chloride didn’t change, according to Fox Hollow’s report.

A family who leased the Ledgerwoods’ farmland decided not to plant a crop and removed their cattle.

Nearly two years after the spill was discovered, the company drilled new water wells next to each house, but questions about the safety of drinking the water persisted. Southcreek eventually halted its cleanup, and the Corporation Commission deemed the incident resolved.

“It’s your own property, but you’re made to feel like they’re doing you a favor if they clean up their pollution,” Stan Ledgerwood said.

The Ledgerwoods considered moving. A nearby farm was for sale. Although it was half the acreage with only one house, the water was clean and they could distance themselves from the debacle on their farm. So they held an auction for their farm in June 2019.

Their property had been appraised to be worth around $1 million before the spill. They feared bids would be low — they had disclosed the water issues to potential buyers — yet the offers from the auction were shocking, with bids for the whole farm coming in at $450,000.

Potential buyers’ “first question was about the water, and I couldn’t say it was safe,” Stan said.

Still, the Ledgerwoods needed to pay their attorneys, so they sold nearly all the land, about 200 acres, including the fields that earned them income. The family kept the two houses, with the injection well sitting in the field between them.

The same week as the auction, the Ledgerwoods sued Southcreek. The family’s lawsuit also named as defendants Wise Oil & Gas No. 10 Ltd. and Newkumet Exploration Inc. — which each owned an interest in the oil Southcreek was pumping — as well as the companies that manufactured and sold the well’s corroded valve. The family sought reimbursement for expenses related to the spill, monetary damages and an order that the oil companies finish removing the contaminated soil and water.

In court, Newkumet denied responsibility because it did not operate the well, while the other companies argued that the failed valve was not defective.

On a recent, unseasonably warm winter day, with a mackerel sky hanging over the property, Stan and Tina Ledgerwood talked about what brought them back to the farm. Stan had worked for three decades at the Oklahoma Electric Cooperative, a nonprofit utility, while Tina held an administrative role at the University of Oklahoma, and they looked forward to a peaceful retirement.

“There’s a draw to the beauty here,” Tina said.

There were also family memories stretching back a century. Tina recalled taking her niece to camp along the Washita, where sandbars interrupt the river’s meandering flow and willows grow on the red dirt banks.

Her niece still talked about eating the best hamburger of her life on one of those excursions, Tina said with a laugh. “It’s frustrating,” she added, her tone shifting, “because you look out there and it’s not yours anymore.”

An escape hatch

Progress in the lawsuit was short-lived. In November 2019, shortly after the Ledgerwoods’ attorney sent discovery requests to Wise Oil & Gas, the company filed in a Texas court for voluntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy — a full liquidation of its assets.

Company executives acknowledged they declared bankruptcy to avoid legal fees associated with the Ledgerwoods’ suit, according to court records.

Bankruptcy court has become an easy escape hatch for the industry to shed its costly obligations. More than 250 oil and gas companies in the U.S. filed for bankruptcy protection between 2015 and 2021, bringing about $175 billion in debt with them, according to research from law firm Haynes and Boone. (Haynes and Boone is representing ProPublica in several Texas lawsuits.)

Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, said it is “outrageous” that oil executives can pay themselves handsomely before offloading liabilities via bankruptcy. He is preparing a Senate bill to amend the Bankruptcy Code to address this pattern in the oil industry.

“They privatize the profits, and then they dump the costs on the taxpayer, which is an outrageous arrangement that needs to end,” Merkley said, adding that “this is not just one company in one place. This is a practice that has been exquisitely developed by the industry.”

Josh Macey, a University of Chicago law professor who studies bankruptcy, said that “one of the most significant benefits you get when you file for bankruptcy protection is the automatic stay,” which puts other cases on hold while the bankruptcy is ongoing.

The Wise Oil & Gas bankruptcy halted the Ledgerwoods’ suit.

So the Ledgerwoods ventured into labyrinthian bankruptcy court proceedings as creditors. But the bankruptcy filings for Wise Oil & Gas — which owned a 20 percent stake in the oil underlying the Ledgerwood farm — listed between $1 million and $10 million in liabilities against less than $33,000 in assets.

While Wise Oil & Gas appeared to be underwater, financial and legal documents showed that the company was one node in a sprawling business empire run by the wealthy Cocanougher family of North Texas.

Alongside their extended family, brothers Daniel and Robert Cocanougher own the web of businesses that included real estate holdings, golf courses, trash services, charitable organizations and more. A company representative estimated in court that the family controlled more than 100 companies. The entire operation was managed by Cocanougher Asset Management #1 LLC out of an office in North Richland Hills, Texas, near Fort Worth.

Wise Oil & Gas was kept afloat by more than 30 loans from other Cocanougher companies, chiefly Wise Resources Ltd., which shared an office with the oil company, according to records filed in court. The loans ensured the oil company had enough cash to operate, but it otherwise hovered around insolvency. Wise Oil & Gas periodically held less than $0 in its account, internal records revealed in court show.

The Ledgerwoods would never see any money from the Cocanoughers’ businesses.

“A pretty ordinary situation”

In bankruptcy, secured creditors, whose debt is backed by collateral, are first in line to claim proceeds from the liquidating company’s assets. Unsecured creditors — such as the Ledgerwoods — are paid if there are funds left over. Even further back in line are environmental claims, such as money to plug wells.

One secured claim stood out: $1.9 million for Wise Resources. According to legal filings, a few months before declaring bankruptcy, Wise Oil & Gas had consolidated its “outstanding obligations” and transferred them to Wise Resources, although the deal was backdated to the previous year.

During one deposition, Jamie Downing, a lawyer for the Cocanoughers, went back and forth with Steve Ledgerwood, who occasionally represented his family, over whether Robert Cocanougher was “two different people” when he signed documents for Wise Oil & Gas and for Wise Resources.

“Robert Cocanougher is signing documents in his capacity as general partner of one entity or the manager of another entity,” Downing said. “They would not be the same person.”

Even though the Cocanoughers were wealthy, the layers of corporate entities between the family and the oil limited their liability for the saltwater spill. It is difficult to “pierce the corporate veil” and tie a company’s actions to individuals, so executives finding protection in bankruptcy is “a pretty ordinary situation,” Macey explained. “We’ve gone too far in shielding investors from the cost of corporate misconduct.”

Daniel and Robert Cocanougher and company attorneys did not respond to requests for comment. In court filings, the family and its companies argued that they were not responsible for the brine release and were within their rights to file for bankruptcy protection.

The Ledgerwoods soon realized the bankruptcy case would lead to neither the cleanup of their farm nor Wise Oil & Gas paying for the damage, so they filed a motion to dismiss it, sanction the Cocanoughers and force the company back into their Oklahoma lawsuit.

The judge overseeing the case was Mark X. Mullin, a former corporate bankruptcy attorney himself. At first, he acknowledged the Ledgerwoods’ plight. “To be clear, the court has a lot of empathy for what happened to the Ledgerwoods,” he said during an August 2021 hearing.

But two months later, Mullin ruled against the Ledgerwoods. He disagreed that Wise Oil & Gas had entered bankruptcy to shed bad investments and dodge cleanup obligations. He blasted the Ledgerwoods for requesting sanctions against the Cocanoughers.

“Merely because the Ledgerwood Creditors have been damaged by the saltwater contamination, this does not provide them with an unfettered right to retaliate or lash out against unrelated and far-removed targets, such as the Cocanougher Sanction Targets,” Mullin wrote.

If the Ledgerwoods wanted to continue seeking damages against the Cocanoughers and their businesses, they would have to pay the oil company’s attorneys’ fees, about $107,000, Mullin ruled.

Mullin declined to comment.

In September 2022, the trustee overseeing Wise’s liquidation reported that, after paying administrative fees, the company had no money for creditors. The Ledgerwoods withdrew their claim.

“I can’t afford to come in and clean it up”

The Ledgerwoods weren’t the only ones taking a financial hit. Southcreek, the well’s operator, also entered bankruptcy protection and began offloading its wells. Cleaning them all up could cost taxpayers nearly $1 million, based on the Corporation Commission’s average cost to plug a well.

Even before the company liquidated, Southcreek executive Gus Lovelace admitted to the state that the company had stopped maintaining its wells, according to Corporation Commission records.

The company left some wells to the state as orphans, including the injection well that fouled the Ledgerwoods’ land. Some ended up in the hands of other oil companies, although those, too, appear to be on the verge of becoming wards of the state.

Michael Brooks, a neighbor of the Ledgerwoods, lives on a farm that his father-in-law worked before him — they’ve put in more than 50 years between the two generations. On a recent winter morning, Brooks showed ProPublica and Capital & Main a 3-acre drill site that scars his land and provides him no royalties.

The plot would be Bermuda grass pasture for cattle, but the paddock instead hosts two inactive oil wells and huge tanks that the Ledgerwoods believe held the salt water that fouled their land. Brooks has to retrieve cows that slip through the barbed wire fence around the site and chew the wells’ rusting metal and drink wastewater.

“I’m at a complete loss,” he said from beneath the brim of a hat embroidered with the logo of an oil and gas pipeline company. “I can’t afford to come in and clean it up. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Brooks has for years tried to reach the companies that own the wells, calling phone numbers on the signs posted around them. No one ever answered or called back, he said.

ProPublica and Capital & Main’s attempts to contact the owners were also fruitless. Court records indicate several of the Southcreek wells on Brooks’ farm and other nearby properties were sold out of bankruptcy. But the first company that purchased them is not a registered oil operator in Oklahoma, and the Corporation Commission has no record of the business taking them over.

The idle wells were then transferred to another oil company, but, when asked about that transfer, Corporation Commission staff said they had made a mistake in approving it and would try to revoke it. The best Brooks can now hope for is the state declaring that the wells are orphaned and plugging them.

“It’s just so frustrating because it’s just here. We look at it every day outside our windows,” Brooks said, adding, “It’s been nothing but a pain.”

“We’ll never have back what we had”

Nearly seven years after brine first poured from gopher holes on the Ledgerwood farm, most of the land has been sold. But the well is still there, rusting behind a curtain of dry weeds.

“We don’t get these years back,” Stan Ledgerwood said. “There’s no way to pay for that. We’ll never have back what we had.”

Stan and Tina drink from their new water well. But Don and Shirley Ledgerwood, Stan’s parents, don’t trust the water that flows from their faucets, as their house sits at a lower elevation than the injection well and water tests have shown occasional increases in the salt concentration.

Don’s back is slightly hunched, but his sprightliness belies his 84 years. He still cuts the expanse of grass surrounding his old brick house, and Stan long ago gave up asking to do it for him. “He doesn’t do it right,” Don said, as he filled 5-gallon blue plastic jugs with water from Stan’s well. In one form or another, Don has been hauling water for six years.

As he hoisted the jugs into his off-road vehicle, Don lamented that landowners have to allow oil companies to drill on their property, only to see those operators avoid the costly cleanup.

“That’s not right,” he said.

The sun was rising higher, and Don had more chores to do. So he finished loading the water jugs and whisked them down the gravel road, kicking up dust that hung in the air alongside his parting words.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Oil companies contaminated a family farm. The courts and regulators let the drillers walk away. on May 19, 2024.