"Wastewater Spills Untracked in Texas, Masking Pollution"

"It took decades for the stand of hardwood trees near Lake Texoma to grow tall. It took less than a day for 3,000 gallons of drilling wastewater to destroy them.

The salty fluid spilled from aging oil field pipes in February 2012 in the Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge north of Dallas. The leak killed 84 mature oaks, cottonwoods and hackberry trees, some of them more than 150 years old. U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials estimated the damage at $154,000.

But you won't find the details of the spill in the records of the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC), the state agency in charge of regulating the state's oil and gas industry.

The state doesn't track wastewater spills, and the rules are so vague and unenforceable that insiders say companies don't even need to notify state officials when they have a spill. Many consider notifying RRC about waste spills to be voluntary, though the agency insists otherwise."

Mike Soraghan reports for EnergyWire November 18, 2015.