Toxic Ground: How Oil Field Pollution Is Threatening Oklahoma

Kara Meredith can tell you the exact day her life turned upside down: Aug. 23, 2025.

She was at her home in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, caring for her 5-week-old son, when one of her daughters ran to tell her there was water all over the bathroom floor. Her husband, Mitch Meredith, wasn’t worried — until he saw the dark liquid bubbling up around the base of the bathtub. Mitch and his relatives worked all night trying to contain it. It was near dawn when his uncle said, “This is oil.”

The United States is the largest oil and gas producer in the world. All of that drilling produces hundreds of billions of gallons of toxic wastewater each year. For decades, energy companies have disposed of that briny fluid by shooting it back underground using high-pressure injection wells. But across Oklahoma, the fluid is spreading uncontrollably belowground, blasting out of old, unplugged wells, polluting land and contaminating drinking water.

In a new documentary from The Frontier and ProPublica, reporter Nick Bowlin investigates a scourge of oil field wastewater seeping into the lives of Oklahomans, about half of whom live within a mile of an oil and gas operation.

His reporting takes him to the headquarters of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the state agency tasked with regulating oil and gas. The agency told Bowlin that it is committed to “doing the right thing, holding operators accountable, protecting Oklahoma and its resources, and providing fair and balanced regulation.” But as Bowlin continues to dig, he discovers he is far from the first one to raise the alarm about what’s happening in Oklahoma.

Watch the documentary here.