By David Wethe and Kevin Crowley
December 11th, 2025
Yet cleaning up the water would raise costs for producers grappling with low crude prices, dealing a blow to a basin that’s crucial to President Donald Trump’s goal of energy dominance. And the prospect of the oil and gas industry discharging wastewater into Texas rivers, even after treatment, is alarming environmentalists. Regulators have yet to prove such releases are safe amid growing concern about their effects on human health and ecosystems.
“It’s really dangerous,” said Virginia Palacios, executive director at the Texas government watchdog Commission Shift. She doubts whether oil companies and state regulators can be trusted to fix an environmental liability they created in the first place.
“The main problem has been that the industry is always looking for shortcuts,” she said.
Read the full article
