\n<\/p>\n
Toxic wastewater from oil fields keeps pouring out of the ground across Oklahoma. It has bubbled up near homes and a school \u2014 and it has killed farmers\u2019 crops and ranchers\u2019 calves.<\/p>\n
These incidents, sometimes called \u201cpurges,\u201d have also contaminated the private water wells of people in rural areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over the years, some Oklahoma residents have made complaints. But they haven\u2019t always found an easy solution.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A rancher in northeastern Oklahoma told us he\u2019s complained for years about wells leaking oil. The state plugged one well, which he said shot salt water and oil 40 feet in the air, but left others. In the southwestern part of the state, a couple found their drinking water had high levels of salt and benzene, a carcinogen. They sued an oil company, but their case is on hold.<\/p>\n
As we continue our reporting on this issue, we need your help to understand how it\u2019s affecting your community. Have you noticed purges or polluted water supplies in your area? Tried to address them? Do you have other information about oil and gas in Oklahoma that you\u2019d like to share? Take a few minutes to fill out our form below.<\/strong><\/p>\n We appreciate you sharing your story, and we take your privacy seriously. We are gathering these stories for the purposes of our reporting and will contact you if we wish to publish any part of your story.<\/strong><\/p>\n If you\u2019d prefer to reach out on Signal, you can reach Nick at NickBowlin.24. (You can find more information about the messaging app Signal, which offers end-to-end encryption, on its website.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Toxic wastewater from oil fields keeps pouring out of the ground across Oklahoma. It has bubbled up near homes and a school \u2014 and it has killed farmers\u2019 crops and ranchers\u2019 calves. These incidents, sometimes called \u201cpurges,\u201d have also contaminated the private water wells of people in rural areas.\u00a0 Over the years, some Oklahoma residents<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[601,265,268,192,247,293,1610],"class_list":{"0":"post-31340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-field","9":"tag-impact","10":"tag-oil","11":"tag-oklahoma","12":"tag-propublica","13":"tag-report","14":"tag-waste"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}