Halos Mandarins Grown From Used Fracking Water?

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Apoptosis
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Halos Mandarins Grown From Used Fracking Water?

Post by Apoptosis »

I have a child and have been feeding him Halos as a healthy snack. One of my friends recently freaked out and told me not to as they use oilfield water from fracking operations to water the citrus trees in California where the fruit is grown.
halos.png
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You know Wonderful Halos... The 'new' mandarin orange brand that is in the middle of a $100 million dollar marketing campaign that to let people know how healthy they are. I did a Google search and found a number of articles about how fruit growers are indeed using oil wastewater on their orchards.

http://freedomoutpost.com/are-these-com ... ste-water/
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/ ... bles-farms
http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_a ... wastewater

I e-mailed Wonderful's parent company, Paramount Citrus, on this situation and got a canned response in just a couple hours. I thought I'd share the response:

Thanks for your inquiry. The Wonderful Company is deeply committed to ensuring that our customers enjoy the highest quality, most nutritious, and best-tasting fruits and nuts available. Our crops are irrigated with water from a variety of sources: groundwater, water from the State Water Project and Central Valley Project, water from local streams, and, in small amounts, water that is produced as part of local oilfield operations.

In the water short state of California, it is vitally important that we use our scarce resources sensibly. “Produced water,” which refers to water that is produced as part of the operations of local oilfields, helps ease pressure both on groundwater resources and sensitive ecosystems. With every barrel of oil produced from the oilfields east of Cawelo, Calif. comes ten times as much water; water that would be injected deep into the ground and wasted if not used for agriculture.

Rest assured, this water is treated extensively to remove as much oil as possible. It is then filtered and tested at multiple locations for the presence of contaminants. This rigorous treatment process brings the water’s hydrocarbon levels back to drinking water standards. It is a safe, reliable supply that is carefully monitored and regulated.
This is the same water that is causing health issues in fracking communities and now they are trying to half ass clean it and put it on our food supply. I'm disgusted and wanted you all to know this. The oil industry is unable to get all the oilfield contaminants out, so things like Benzene, Methlyene chloride and nasty hydrocarbons are going to get absorbed by the trees and eventually end up in the fruit and finally those that consume it. Snopes has this food contamination issue as a mixture of true and false, but it's confirmed that they can't fully treat the waste water and the long-term health impact is largely unknown. I'll pass on feeding Halos to a baby/toddler...
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Re: Halos Mandarins Grown From Used Fracking Water?

Post by camaroguy1998 »

WOW!

Thanx for the info!
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Re: Halos Mandarins Grown From Used Fracking Water?

Post by KnightRid »

It is amazing how big companies can get away with something like this. My wife was buying these too but not any more!
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Re: Halos Mandarins Grown From Used Fracking Water?

Post by Apoptosis »

I've e-mailed several citrus growers and Sunkist got back to me today with this answer.

My Question:
Are any of your citrus fruits injected with Citrus Red 2 or any other dye agents?

Also, I found a story about how some brands are using oil wastewater on the fields. Can you comment on that as well? The article I read can be found here - http://www.motherjones.com/environment/ ... bles-farms
The response from Sunkist on 3/9/2016:
None of the fruit marketed by Sunkist is from groves watered with oil wastewater nor do they contain dyes.

Anthony, Winnie J
Sunkist Growers
I also saw this on the Facebook page of Sunkist:
Please find background information on produced water here on the Cawelo Water District’s website: http://www.cawelowd.org/. Hopefully these resources will help answer questions.
I looked around and found the board meeting notes for CWD tomorrow - March 10th, 2016:
oilfield-waters.jpg
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Sure enough Kern County's Cawelo Water District still appears to be interested in still using oilfield waters from Chevron, so this is not something that has ended.

"Oil giant Chevron recycles 21 million gallons of that water each day and sells it to farmers who use it on about 45,000 acres of crops, about 10% of Kern County's farmland." - Source
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