In October 2021, workers from a water treatment company irrigated a 10 x 20 foot test plot of scrubby grass on an oil well site near a Navajo Nation chapter house in northwest New Mexico. The grass thickened, grew and later shriveled under the high desert sun and drought. Even so, it nourished a statewide, petroleum-based controversy when locals learned that the company was researching “produced water,” a toxic byproduct of oil and gas development, as part of a program to search for new methods of treatment and disposal of the industrial waste.
Daniel Tso, who was chairman of the Health, Education and Human Services Committee of the Navajo Nation Council at the time, says that, since hearing about the test plot, he and others have been working to stop all use of produced water from oil and gas production on the Navajo Nation “through the courts if necessary.” But the oil production and water treatment companies at the center of the issue and the head of a New Mexico group studying produced water are wondering what all the fuss is about, because they say no produced water was used. It’s all a big miscommunication, they say. Even so, that miscommunication highlights the sharp divides between state agencies tasked with protecting human health and the environment, an industry trying to treat and reuse toxic waste and the people who live amid wells in oil and gas fields and feel left out of crucial conversations about regulation and enforcement.
