Kern County Superior Court and Eastern District of California
Working on behalf of small, family-owned farms located in central Kern County, in two separate cases, CPM assembled multidisciplinary teams of scientists and economists to determine the causes and implications of contamination that had been introduced into the underlying irrigation aquifers, damaging orchards at both farms, in some cases to the point that they were no longer viable and had to be torn out and destroyed.
CPM’s analysis included consulting with hydrogeologists to identify the origin and likely transportation pathways for the contaminants at issue. Among other things, these analyses highlighted the impacts of oil extraction at neighboring properties and the subsequent reinjection of produced well water, a byproduct of oil drilling which is characterized by extremely high concentrations of salts. CPM’s experts used statistical techniques to analyze potential mechanisms allowing these reinjected produced waters to travel back up and into aquifers which the farmers had relied upon to provide irrigation water for their overlying farms, and to identify unique chemical fingerprints for these contaminants, which allowed them to be linked back to the original oil extraction activities. CPM also worked with agronomists to identify the mechanism by which those contaminants were transferred from the ground and into the overlying orchards, with the resulting damage to crops. Finally, CPM worked with experts capable of evaluating the impact on the profitability of operations at these farms and on the overall land values.
