Produced Water on Farmland:
What You Need to Know
What’s Going On?
The Texas government is moving to authorize the use of treated oilfield wastewater on farmland, ranchland, and into waterways.
Once this rule goes into effect, companies will have a pathway to start spraying produced water — the chemical-laden waste brought up during oil extraction — across Texas.
Under the new proposed rules, there will be no reliable way to know whether oilfield chemicals are ending up on the food you eat, in runoff from nearby land, or in the air your kids breathe.
What’s Produced Water?
It’s not water at all, but a toxic, briny sludge that can contain:
- Heavy metals such as arsenic and barium
- Radioactive materials like radium, sometimes at levels the EPA regulates as hazardous in other contexts
- PFAS (“forever chemicals”) linked to long-term — as in multigenerational — health and fertility impacts
- Volatile organic compounds like benzene and toluene
- Chemical additives used during drilling and extraction
Many of these contaminants are difficult to detect and are not explicitly required to be tested under the draft rule.
Some, like PFAS, accumulate in soil, crops, and livestock — raising concerns about proposals to use this water on cattle feed, and market risks for Texas farmers and ranchers looking to sell their products.
The oil industry says it can clean this waste up, but current rules don’t set a standard that would force them to do that. And if Texans get hurt or sick from this wastewater, there may be no legal recourse.
Why Not?
The oil industry has fought hard for protections against lawsuits if things go wrong — even as they insist they can clean up their waste.
Last year, after lobbying from oil companies — including one that released a 70-foot geyser of toxic wastewater into the New Mexico desert in May — Texas lawmakers made it far harder for people to sue over harms caused by this wastewater.
But there’s a catch — companies are only protected as long as they follow the state rules being set this month.
If those rules stay weak, Texans could be left without recourse even when contamination occurs. If they’re strong, state lands, waters and food supply are much more protected.
Why Dump This Stuff on Texas Farmland?
Whether or not it’s good for the public, it solves an urgent problem for the oil industry. Every day, Texas operators produce 20 million barrels of toxic wastewater — 1200-plus Olympic sized pools — containing salts, heavy metals, benzene, radionuclides, and PFAS. They produce so much of this that underground space to store it is running out.
Now the industry is looking aboveground for new dumping sites, and some companies pressuring regulators to pass a rule fast. The new rule was released in May without notice given to the public or the press. The comments close June 16; the hearing is June 15.
Meanwhile, TCEQ has not released the scientific basis for the rule or answered basic safety questions.
What’s Wrong With the Rule?
Limited public input. The rule was released with only one month for comment, without broad public notice or supporting science.
Minimal setbacks. The current setbacks allow produced water within 100 feet of creeks, 150 feet of private wells and 500 feet of public wells — far closer than produced water has traveled in recent spills — and allow operators to apply for exceptions even to those standards. They also don’t cover schools, churches, residences, or daycares.
No consistency. The rules set permits on a case by case basis, rather than providing a rigorous, consistent standard to protect the public.
No required contaminant testing. The rule does not mandate testing for key pollutants like PFAS or benzene; decisions are left to case-by-case permitting.
Lack of transparency. Operators are not required to disclose chemical contents, application volumes, or monitoring results, and may claim this information as proprietary.
These are bad for the environment and the public — but they’re also risky for Texas farmers, who in addition to harms from wastewater running off their neighbors’ property can face the prospect of people being scared to purchase their crops.
And they are also a threat to oil companies themselves, which need regulatory consistency to do business.
Is the Wastewater Actually Safe After Treatment?
Industry says it can be treated to drinking water standards, but they haven’t released the data that would prove that’s true.
The published science, on the other hand, shows big gaps in our knowledge. A 2025 GeoHealth review of 236 studies found that scientists still don’t understand how to effectively treat produced water; how it interacts with the ecosystem; all the ways it can make it into people’s water systems; and what it does when it gets into the human body.
But even if it can be cleaned, the dirty fact about water treatment is that when a toxic source is purified, the toxins don’t disappear — they are simply concentrated somewhere else.
When researchers tested one actual produced water-treatment facility, they found that it successfully removed more than 90% of the radium — but that the toxic elements built up downstream at levels around 200 the background level of radiation.
The current rule does not address where these leftover wastes go or who manages them.
Has Spraying Produced Water on Crops Been Tried Before?
Not like this. Texas would be the first state to experiment with it at scale.
New Mexico, where many of the same industry players operate — and where the state is far more diligent about recording produced water spills — offers a portrait of the risks.
In just two months of 2025, New Mexico oil and gas companies reported 300 spills, releasing 1.3 millions of gallons of toxic wastewater — including at facilities with state-of-the-art leak detection technology.
Just this May, a New Mexico produced water line failed, sending a 70-foot geyser of tainted water into the air. The owner, NGL Energy Partners, was one of the main proponents of last year’s Texas law shielding companies from legal liability for damages they cause.
And Texas produces roughly three times as much oil as New Mexico, increasing the scale of potential impacts.
What To Demand From Tceq
More time. Extend the comment period and hold hearings in affected regions (Permian Basin, Coastal Bend, North Texas).
Real setbacks. Require meaningful distances from homes, water sources, schools, and property lines, based on documented spill risks.
Real testing. Set enforceable limits for specific contaminants, with independent, certified, 24/7 testing before and after application — not just occasional spot-checks.
Real disposal. Set strict enforceable rules on where sludges pulled out of treated water will go.
Real transparency. Require full public disclosure of chemical contents, volumes, locations, and monitoring data, and release the science behind the rule.
These measures would not stop development — they would establish basic safeguards for public health and environmental protection.
How To Submit
Submit a comment by 11:59 PM Central, June 16: tceq.commentinput.com/?id=bB4ec365S (reference Rule Project Number 2026-006-309-OW).
Attend the public hearing on June 15 in Austin or online (register by June 11 at Rules@tceq.texas.gov).