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In early February 2016, social media users began sharing posts warning that specific brands of produce were grown in wastewater that was a byproduct of fracking activity (i.e., the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release fossil fuels) and therefore posed a risk to human health if consumed. Many Facebook users linked to a 10 February 2016 post on the blog EcoWatch which recapped the second episode of a web documentary series titled Spotlight California. That post suggested that farmers in a specific irrigation district were so desperate for water that they used oil wastewater produced by Chevron to grow food crops (including tangerines). The post quoted a retired almond farmer named Tom Frantz saying that the irrigation water being used in that area was toxic (and previously untested): Social media interest in wastewater irrigation spiked in February 2016, but the issue was neither new nor specific to tangerines. The subject had been covered in a 14 November 2014 report by San Francisco Bay Area television station KNTV: An 8 April 2015 San Francisco Chronicle article concerns over the safety of wastewater irrigation, which followed a March 2015 hearing about water safety practices, suggested that the issues involved stretched back over thirty years due to confusion over which aquifers were designated as allowable for leftover wastewater injection: However, it wasn't until mid-2014 that the issue appeared to come to a head, when the sudden closure of eleven wells in Kern County caused concern about the overall safety of aquifer water to escalate: Some tests indicated elevated levels of various substances in well water, but it wasn't clear whether those results had anything to do with previous wastewater injection rather than natural processes: A 6 April 2015 Newsweek article also examined the controversy. Their coverage similarly indicated that the concerns over oilfield wastewater were not necessarily without merit, but that available evidence did not yet prove that wastewater injection had polluted any of the area's drinking or irrigation water: At the time the Newsweek article's publication, Chevron issued a statement about its wastewater disposal practices: David Ansolabehere, general manager of the Cawelo Water District, said that the district had performed tests for contaminants over the years despite lack of regulatory compulsion to do so, and that the tests have not turned up any positive results. On 1 July 2015, the Los Angeles Times similarly reported that tests demonstrated no detectable methylene chloride (one of the potential polluntants that prompted earlier concern) in area water supplies: Interest in the quality of water in affected regions of California waxed and waned until the publication of a 1 September 2015 article about Californians Boycotting Produce Grown with Oil Wastewater (an alarmist headline belied by the article's opening sentence, which stated that produce companies may be using contaminated oil industry wastewater to grow their crops. That article recklessly asserted that the crops in question were being irrigated with water which was toxic, laden with chemicals used in fracking that may be used without disclosure or testing and laced with carcinogens, despite the lack of solid evidence documenting that any of those claims were true: That article failed to provide answers to the most obvious of questions: Had the fruit grown in that area ever been tested for toxins? Exactly what levels of specific contaminants constituted toxic for the purposes of these claims? What carcinogens is the irrigation water laced with, and what are their levels and sources? Los Angeles-area television station KCET addressed the detail-lacking, panic-inducing headlines associated with this issue in a 16 September 2015 report, noting that: Henry reported in her own article that reporting on the wastewater controversy was rife with misinformation: Tom Frantz, a local almond farmer turned environmental activist, says the fact that so little tangible information is available is part of the problem: A report released in March 2016 by environmental watchdog group Clean Water Action claimed that wastewater from disposal pits was leaching into irrigation aquifers, which in turn were flowing into a tributary of the Kern River, creating further potential problems for farmers. We contacted Chevron for further information about the ongoing controversy in Kern County. On 10 March 2016, Chevron representative Cameron Van Ast provided us with extensive detail about the company's water programs in California. He stated that the program in question had been operative for more than two decades and that Chevron does not use hydraulic fracturing [fracking] at Kern River Oil Field, explaining: Van Ast further maintained that Chevron took issue with the bevy of claims made by Water Defense from a scientific standpoint: Van Ast also addressed claims raised in the Spotlight documentary (addressed above): Van Ast concluded by reiterating that Chevron and the Cawelo Water District maintained an important conservation strategy to provide a significant and important benefit to local farmers and California: The topic of wastewater in California and its effect on tangerines and other produce is a multi-faceted, multi-player controversy that is still under investigation. Research remains underway to definitively determine whether so-called frack fruits pose any threat to consumers who eat them, but the data collected thus far don't support any claims of danger to human health posed by the consumption of produce grown from crops irrigated with wastewater. Some of the high-profile initial reporting on this issue included misinformation, incomplete information, and other details that made for good social media outrage fodder but were neither evidence-based nor supported by existing data.
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