"What Lies Beneath"

INVESTIGATIVE CATEGORY

Texas Monthly
06/15/2022

After rancher Ashley Watt took to social media to fault Chevron for failing to shut down an abandoned well that had begun spewing toxic water onto her land in West Texas, Texas Monthly’s Russell Gold quickly got to the scene. A celebrated energy writer, Gold could smell a story in Watt’s willingness to publicly call out an oil giant when many other landowners have quietly accepted damage-settlement checks. He vividly introduces readers to the crew Watt assembled to hold Chevron accountable and explores the heartbreaking motivations behind her quest to determine why a well supposedly plugged long ago sprung back to life.

His investigation reveals that a single leaking well was merely the first piece of evidence of an environmental disaster. For decades, state regulators have tacitly granted the oil and gas industry free rein to inject millions of barrels of chemical-laced water into the ground, creating a radioactive lake that has repeatedly burst up onto the surface. By uncovering these secrets, Gold raises a question that state leaders must answer: Will we allow the Permian Basin to be transformed into a landscape of poisonous ponds and noxious geysers, capable of sustaining intensive oil and gas activity but little else?

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Submitted by Alicia Maria Meier.