Oklahoma oil – A Fort Gibson family says toxic oil-field wastewater bubbled up inside their home on Aug. 23, 2025. The documentary “Toxic Ground” follows the crisis across Oklahoma, where briny injection wastewater is believed to be seeping from old, unplugged wells and thre
For Kara Meredith, the date is etched into every quiet moment since. Aug. 23, 2025.
She was in 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 at first. Then he looked closer.
Dark liquid began bubbling up around the base of the bathtub. Mitch and his relatives worked through the night trying to contain it. Not long after dawn, an uncle said what they were seeing wasn’t just a plumbing issue.
“This is oil.”
Oklahoma’s wastewater problem isn’t new to the people who live near the fields—just the scale of it is harder to absorb. The United States is the largest oil and gas producer in the world. and drilling generates hundreds of billions of gallons of toxic wastewater each year. For decades, companies have dealt with that briny fluid by injecting it back underground through high-pressure injection wells.
But across Oklahoma, the fluid is spreading uncontrollably belowground, blasting out of old, unplugged wells and, in the process, polluting land and contaminating drinking water.
In a new documentary from The Frontier and ProPublica. reporter Nick Bowlin follows the trail of oil field wastewater seeping into the lives of Oklahomans. The documentary frames it as a crisis that reaches far beyond the fence line. About half of Oklahoma residents live within a mile of an oil and gas operation—close enough that contamination isn’t an abstract risk. It’s proximity.
Bowlin’s reporting takes him to the headquarters of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. the state agency tasked with regulating oil and gas. In response to the documentary’s investigation. the agency said it is committed to “doing the right thing. holding operators accountable. protecting Oklahoma and its resources. and providing fair and balanced regulation.”.
As Bowlin continues to dig, the documentary places the emergency into a longer arc—one in which he finds he is far from the first person to raise the alarm about what’s happening in Oklahoma.
That is the tension at the heart of the story: the promise of accountability. and the continued reality of wastewater that can surface where families are trying to sleep. bathe. and live. The Meredith family’s experience—oil bubbling up around a bathtub—lands with particular force against the backdrop of decades of underground disposal and the claim that regulators are focused on protecting the state’s resources.
Oklahoma oil field wastewater Fort Gibson toxic wastewater injection wells unplugged wells Oklahoma Corporation Commission drinking water contamination oil and gas pollution