If Your Water Well Tested Positive for Benzene in Crane County, Texas, You Are Not Alone
The test came back. Benzene. Chloride. Sulfate. Salt. The water your family has been drinking — the water your livestock drank before you had to move them, before you had to sell them — is contaminated with chemicals that came from somebody’s oil operation. And right now, three things are true at the same time: this is part of a documented regional crisis that state regulators and scientists have confirmed, your legal rights include recovery for property damage and medical monitoring even without a current cancer diagnosis, and the evidence of what happened to your water is degrading every single day you wait.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle toxic tort and environmental contamination cases in Texas, and what is happening across the Permian Basin is exactly the kind of case we build. We are not your counsel on the Antina Ranch matter or any specific incident described on this page. We are the resource — the education, the governing law, the evidence clocks, and the honest evaluation of what a case like yours is worth — so that when you call 1-888-ATTY-911, you already know what the fight looks like and what to demand.
What follows is everything a senior trial attorney would tell a landowner in Crane County who just learned their water is poisoned. Take what you need. Act on the time-sensitive steps. Then call.
How Produced Water Reaches Your Drinking Water Well
Understanding the mechanism matters because it is the backbone of the legal case. This is not a spill on the surface. This is a subsurface migration case — and the physics of how the contamination reaches your aquifer is what a jury will need to hear.
Here is the chain, step by step:
Oil and gas operators produce massive volumes of produced water alongside oil. That water is chemically distinct from naturally occurring groundwater — it contains benzene, chlorides, sulfates, salts, and other compounds pulled from deep formations during fracking. Operators cannot easily reinject it into the same well that produced it. Instead, they pipe it or truck it to disposal injection wells — sites where the ground has enough permeability to accept the flow.
The problem is where and how they chose those sites. A state researcher studying injection and seismicity at Texas’ Bureau of Economic Geology put it bluntly: operators historically picked injection sites as close to production wells and pipelines as the ground would allow. They did not look closely at whether the sites were near geologic faults or formations that could be affected. Injection was not optimized to target the best geology. It prioritized location over reservoir quality.
That is not a careless mistake. That is a choice — and it is the engine of a punitive damages argument.
When operators inject massive volumes under pressure, the underground pressure swells. Initially, deep injection was the primary method — but it hit long-dormant fault lines and triggered earthquakes. Texas went from 19 earthquakes magnitude 1 or higher near Pecos in 2009 to more than 1,600 in 2017. The Railroad Commission responded by establishing seismic response areas and limiting deep injection.
So operators shifted to shallow injection — injecting above the shale formations, closer to freshwater aquifers. And that is when a new set of problems emerged: well blowouts, ground deformation, and aquifer contamination. The underground pressure plumes can force columns of produced water upward to the surface, potentially passing through shallow aquifers and tainting them. The pressure can also force produced water up through old, corroding well casings. If the casing for an old pipe corrodes underground within an aquifer, produced water can start flowing directly into the groundwater.
A pressure gauge affixed to a plugged well at the Crane County ranch read 800 PSI. The person logging damage there said he had seen it as high as 1,300 PSI. He said: if there is positive or negative pressure on a well, it is not plugged, and you have a problem.
That problem is the mechanism of your contamination. The pressure from someone’s injection operation forced produced water through a corroded, improperly plugged, or failed well casing and into the aquifer that feeds your water well. The benzene in your glass did not fall from the sky. It was pushed there by human operations that someone chose to run, at a location someone chose for convenience, under pressure someone chose to apply.
Who Is Responsible for the Contamination
In a Permian Basin water contamination case, the liable parties are not always obvious. The company whose name is on the injection well permit may not be the company that chose the site. The company that drilled the original oil well decades ago may not be the company that was supposed to plug it. And the company that transported the produced water to the injection site is yet another entity in the chain.
Here are the categories of defendants in a case like this:
Legacy well operators — companies that drilled, operated, and were responsible for plugging old oil wells that are now serving as conduits for pressurized produced water to reach freshwater aquifers. In the Crane County case, Chevron was named as the legacy well operator, accused of failing to remediate old, abandoned, and leaking wells. The case is settling — which tells you the defendant viewed going to trial as more dangerous than paying.
Injection well operators — companies that applied for and received permits to inject produced water underground. One operator applied for permits to inject produced water approximately 1,000 feet from Midland’s drinking water wells. The city of Midland filed a formal protest. The operator settled, agreeing to reduce the number of wells and drill farther from the water supply. When a city the size of Midland takes the position that injection near its drinking water is dangerous, that position carries weight.
Unidentified operators across Crane, Reeves, and Pecos counties — the companies whose shallow injection activities caused the underground pressure surges, well blowouts, aquifer contamination, and ground deformation documented by the Railroad Commission and scientific researchers. These operators may be identified through Railroad Commission permit records, injection volume reports, and pressure monitoring data.
Legacy and abandoned well owners across the Permian Basin — the owners of corroding well casings and improperly plugged wells that serve as the physical conduits through which pressurized produced water breaches freshwater aquifers and reaches the surface. A plugged well that shows 800 PSI — or 1,300 PSI — is not plugged. And the company that was responsible for plugging it is the company that created the pathway for contamination.
The corporate structure matters. A major integrated oil company like Chevron operates through layers of subsidiaries, affiliated entities, and predecessor companies. The entity that holds the permit may not be the entity that holds the assets. Naming the right defendant — or, more accurately, naming every right defendant — is the difference between a case that pays and a case that bounces. We pull the Railroad Commission permit files, the Secretary of State corporate filings, and the chain of title on the wells to identify every entity in the chain.
The Evidence Clock: What Exists, Who Holds It, How Fast It Disappears
This is the most important section on this page. Every piece of evidence in a water contamination case is on a clock. Some clocks are measured in years. Some are measured in days. The fastest-dying evidence is the evidence that proves exposure and contamination — and it is the evidence most people never think to preserve.
Water quality test results. The test that found benzene in your well is foundational — it establishes the presence and concentration of contaminants in your water supply. But contaminant levels shift with groundwater movement. The benzene reading you got today may be lower — or higher — next month as the plume migrates, dilutes, or shifts. Baseline testing must be preserved before further changes alter the chemical profile. If you have test results, keep them. If you have not tested yet, test now. And test again, on a schedule, to document the trend.
Benzene biomonitoring — the fastest-dying evidence of all. If you have been drinking contaminated water, benzene metabolites are in your blood and urine right now. They clear from your body within days to weeks after exposure stops. The day you stop drinking the water is the day the evidence of exposure begins to disappear. Blood work and urinary metabolite testing done immediately — before the metabolites clear — is the proof that benzene was in your body. Wait a month, and the test comes back clean. The defense says no exposure. The case gets harder. This is the single most time-sensitive piece of evidence in the entire case. If your water has benzene in it, get biomonitoring done now.
Railroad Commission injection well permit records, volume reports, and pressure monitoring data. These records demonstrate the scale, location, and timing of injection operations near your property. They connect specific operators to pressure events that caused contamination. RRC records are retained per regulatory schedule, but older permits and inspection reports may be archived or difficult to obtain. Preservation letters should target both the RRC and the operator’s records.
Well pressure gauge readings and mechanical integrity test results. The 800 PSI — or 1,300 PSI — pressure readings on plugged wells are direct evidence of over-pressurization and well failure. Pressure data is continuously logged. Historical readings may be overwritten or lost if not formally requested. The gauge readings must be documented with date-stamped photography before the data cycles off.
Operator internal communications regarding geologic risk assessments and injection site selection. This is the engine of punitive damages. The article quotes a state researcher saying operators prioritized location over reservoir quality. If a defendant’s own internal emails, memos, or geology reports show they knew the site was geologically unsuitable and chose it anyway, that is conscious disregard. Email retention policies vary by company. Litigation holds must be issued immediately to prevent routine deletion of internal risk assessments and geology reports.
Cattle auction records, property appraisals, and alternative water procurement invoices. These quantify economic damages — lost livestock value, property diminution, and ongoing water replacement costs. Auction records are permanent, but appraisals must be commissioned before remediation alters the property’s contaminated status. If you remediate before the property is appraised, the appraisal cannot capture the diminution.
Seismic monitoring data from the UT Bureau of Economic Geology and USGS. This correlates injection volume increases with seismic events and pressure plume migration, supporting general causation between injection activities and subsurface contamination pathways. Seismic data is archived, but specific queries must be formulated to isolate events near your property.
Pipeline and well casing corrosion inspection records. These establish that operators knew or should have known that corroding infrastructure would serve as a conduit for produced water to enter freshwater aquifers. Inspection records may be discarded after regulatory retention periods expire. Older legacy well records are especially vulnerable to loss.
Medical records and biomonitoring results. These link benzene exposure to physiological harm or establish the need for medical monitoring. Baseline blood work and urinary metabolite testing are time-sensitive. Every day you wait, the benzene clears a little more from your body.
The preservation letter goes out the day you call. Not the day after. Not next week. The day you call. That letter orders the operator, the Railroad Commission, and every third-party data vendor to freeze every record, every log, every email, every pressure reading, every corrosion inspection, and every internal geologic assessment. If they let required evidence die after that letter, the law answers — an adverse-inference instruction telling the jury they may assume the lost record was as bad as the plaintiff says it was.
The Oil Company’s Playbook — and How We Counter Each Move
Oil companies and their insurance carriers have a playbook for contamination claims. It is designed to minimize what they pay, delay what they cannot avoid, and deny what they can get away with. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — he sat in the rooms where these decisions were made, he knows how claims are valued and how denials are engineered, and he now uses that knowledge for injured clients. Here is what the other side does and how we answer.
Play 1: The “natural background” defense. The company says benzene and chloride occur naturally in West Texas groundwater. Counter: The specific chemical fingerprint of produced water — the combination of benzene, chloride, sulfate, and salt at elevated concentrations — is distinct from natural background levels. A hydrogeologist can distinguish between naturally occurring minerals and contamination from produced water injection by analyzing the chemical ratios, the depth of the contamination, and the timing relative to the start of injection operations. Nature does not put that particular cocktail in your well at those particular concentrations at the same time someone starts injecting a billion barrels of waste nearby.
Play 2: The “you cannot prove it was us” defense. The company says you cannot trace the contamination in your well to their specific injection operation. This is the Texas specific-causation standard, and it is the defense’s strongest card. Counter: We overcome it with hydrogeological modeling that traces the pressure plume and contaminant transport pathway from the injection site to your aquifer. We use the defendant’s own Railroad Commission-mandated pressure monitoring data — the records showing what they injected, where they injected it, and at what pressure — to build the pathway. We correlate the timing of contamination in your well with the timing of injection operations. And we use the corrosion inspection records to show the specific well casing that failed and allowed produced water to enter your aquifer. This is what a hydrogeologist and a petroleum engineer do together.
Play 3: The “regulatory compliance” defense. The company says it followed all Railroad Commission rules, so it cannot be liable. Counter: Compliance with a regulatory minimum is not a defense to negligence or to strict liability for abnormally dangerous activities. The Railroad Commission itself — the agency that wrote the rules — said in February 2024 that injections “resulted in widespread increases in reservoir pressure that may not be in the public interest and may harm mineral and freshwater resources in Texas.” When the regulator says the injections it permitted are causing harm, the company cannot hide behind its permit. And the new rules effective June 2025 — requiring operators to plug older oil wells within a half-mile radius of new injection wells — are an implicit admission that the old rules were not enough.
Play 4: The quick settlement check. A check arrives with a release printed on the back, before the full extent of contamination is known, before the biomonitoring is done, before the property is appraised. The amount looks meaningful. The release is designed to end the case. Counter: Never sign a release without understanding the full scope of the contamination, the property damage, and the health risks. A quick check is the cheapest money an oil company will ever spend. The release they hand you closes every door — the property claim, the health claim, the medical monitoring claim, the punitive damages claim — for one payment that is a fraction of what the case is worth. The preservation letter, the water testing, the biomonitoring, and the property appraisal must all happen before any release is signed.
Play 5: The “you assumed the risk” defense. The company says you chose to live and ranch in an oil-producing area. Counter: Texas follows modified comparative negligence with a 51 percent bar — your own fault reduces your recovery but does not bar it unless you are more than 50 percent at fault. In contamination cases involving rural landowners who had no role in the injection process, comparative fault is unlikely to be a significant factor. Living near oil operations does not mean you assumed the risk of having your aquifer poisoned. The law does not ask you to move because someone else decided to inject a billion barrels of waste underground near your water.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Right Now
If your water well has tested positive for benzene or any produced water contaminant, here is what you do — in order, starting now.
Hour one: stop drinking the water. This is not a suggestion. Benzene is a Group 1 carcinogen. There is no safe level of long-term ingestion. Switch to bottled water for all drinking, cooking, and any use that involves ingestion. Do not bathe children in contaminated water if the benzene levels are elevated — benzene can be absorbed through the skin, though the primary exposure pathway of concern is ingestion.
Hour one through twelve: get biomonitoring done. If you have been drinking the water, benzene metabolites are in your blood and urine right now. They are clearing from your body as you read this. Blood work and urinary metabolite testing — done immediately, before the metabolites clear — is the proof of exposure that the defense cannot talk away. Ask your doctor for a complete blood count with differential and a urinary S-phenylmercapturic acid (S-PMA) test, which is a specific biomarker for benzene exposure. Tell your doctor you have been drinking water that tested positive for benzene and you need baseline biomonitoring before the evidence clears.
Hours twelve through twenty-four: document the water test. If you have water quality test results, make copies. Photograph the results. Save the original lab report. If you do not have test results yet, arrange for independent testing immediately — not through the oil company, not through a government agency that may take weeks, but through an independent certified laboratory. Test for the full produced water chemical suite: benzene, chloride, sulfate, salt, and total dissolved solids.
Hours twenty-four through forty-eight: document the pressure. If there are oil wells — active, inactive, or plugged — on or near your property, photograph any pressure gauges attached to them. Note the reading and the date. The pressure data showing 800 PSI or higher on a plugged well is evidence of over-pressurization that the operator may not have reported. This data can be overwritten or lost if not formally requested.
Hours forty-eight through seventy-two: call a lawyer. The preservation letter — the document that freezes every record, every log, every email, every pressure reading before it can be destroyed — goes out the day you call. Not the day after you call. The day you call. Every day that passes without that letter is a day the operator can legally destroy records that prove your case. The Railroad Commission’s retention schedules are not infinite. The operator’s email retention policies are not generous. The pressure data is continuously overwriting itself. The biomonitoring window is closing.
What not to do. Do not sign anything the oil company or its insurance adjuster hands you. Do not accept a quick check. Do not let anyone on your property to “test” your well without an independent witness. Do not post about the contamination on social media. Do not talk to the oil company’s representative without your lawyer present. And do not wait. The evidence is dying.
Why Attorney911
Ralph P. Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. Licensed in Texas since 1998, admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Ralph was a journalist before he was a lawyer — he learned to dig for the facts that matter, then he learned to fight with them. He leads our trial team on the cases that require a lawyer who has been in the room for decades.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims from people exactly like the reader of this page. He knows how claims are valued, how IME doctors are selected, how surveillance is deployed, and how delay tactics work. He now sits on your side of the table. Lupe is fluent in Spanish — he conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter — and he is a third-generation Texan with family roots that run to the King Ranch. He knows this state, this land, and this fight.
We handle toxic tort and environmental contamination cases and wrongful death claims across Texas. Our work in the Permian Basin oilfield gives us the industry knowledge — the geology, the regulatory framework, the corporate structures, the evidence — that a generalist simply does not have.
We work on contingency. You pay nothing unless we win. The fee is 33.33 percent if the case resolves before trial, 40 percent if it goes to trial. We do not get paid unless you get paid. The consultation is free. The call is 24/7. A live person answers — not an answering service.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Or call our direct line at (713) 528-9070. We serve clients in English and in Spanish. We serve Crane County, Reeves County, Pecos County, Midland County, and every county in the Permian Basin where the water is poisoned and the people who poisoned it are hoping you wait too long.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we guarantee is this: the day you call, the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the oil company for contaminating my water well?
Yes — if you can prove that the defendant’s specific operations caused the contamination of your specific water supply. Texas law recognizes toxic tort recovery under negligence, strict liability, private nuisance, trespass, and negligence per se theories. The challenge is specific causation — proving the contamination in your well came from this defendant’s operations, not just that contamination exists. That is what a hydrogeologist’s contamination model is built to do: trace the pathway from the injection well to your aquifer using the defendant’s own pressure monitoring data and the corrosion records on the wells that failed.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit for water contamination in Texas?
Texas applies a two-year statute of limitations for personal injury claims. For property damage from environmental contamination, the limitations period may run from the date you discovered — or reasonably should have discovered — the contamination. This is called the discovery rule. If you learned your water was contaminated recently, you likely still have time. But the evidence of contamination and exposure is dying faster than the legal deadline — benzene metabolites clear from your body in days, pressure data overwrites itself, and water quality shifts with groundwater movement. The deadline is not your biggest problem. The evidence is.
What if I have been drinking the contaminated water for months or years?
You may have a personal injury claim in addition to a property damage claim. Benzene is a Group 1 carcinogen linked to acute myeloid leukemia and other blood disorders. The latency period — the time between exposure and disease — can run years to more than a decade. You do not need to have cancer to recover for the cost of medical monitoring. The latency itself is what makes baseline medical monitoring a recoverable category of damages. But you need biomonitoring done immediately — blood work and urinary metabolite testing — before the benzene metabolites clear from your body. That evidence disappears within days to weeks after you stop drinking the contaminated water.
How do I know if my water is contaminated from fracking waste?
The chemical signature of produced water is distinct from naturally occurring groundwater contamination. Produced water typically contains a combination of benzene, chloride, sulfate, and salt at elevated concentrations. If your water test shows that particular combination — especially if it appeared after injection operations began nearby — it is consistent with produced water contamination. An independent certified laboratory can test for the full chemical suite. Do not rely on testing arranged by the oil company. Arrange your own independent testing.
Is this happening to other people in the Permian Basin?
Yes. The contamination crisis is regional, not isolated. A ranch in Crane County had 150 head of cattle removed and auctioned after water testing found benzene and other contaminants. An old well in Toyah, Texas erupted as a 160-foot geyser of toxic water in December 2024. A sinkhole in Crane County warped a highway so badly the state spent $30 million repairing it. The city of Midland protested injection permits near its drinking water wells. The Railroad Commission itself wrote to operators in February 2024 that injections have “resulted in widespread increases in reservoir pressure that may not be in the public interest and may harm mineral and freshwater resources in Texas.” This is a documented, regional, regulator-confirmed crisis.
What if the oil company offers me a settlement check?
Do not sign it without speaking to a lawyer first. A quick check with a release attached is designed to close your case before the full extent of contamination, property damage, and health risk is known. The release the company hands you closes every door — the property claim, the health claim, the medical monitoring claim, the punitive damages claim — for one payment that is typically a fraction of what the case is worth. The preservation letter, the independent water testing, the biomonitoring, and the property appraisal must all happen before any release is signed.
Do I have to sell my property to file a lawsuit?
No. You can file a lawsuit for contamination while retaining ownership of your property. Your damages include the diminution in property value caused by the contamination — the difference between what the property was worth before and what it is worth now. You do not have to sell to recover for the loss. In fact, selling the property before it is appraised in its contaminated state can destroy the evidence of diminution.
What does it cost to hire a water contamination lawyer?
We work on contingency. The consultation is free. You pay nothing unless we win. The fee is 33.33 percent of the recovery if the case resolves before trial, 40 percent if it goes to trial. We front the costs of the case — the water testing, the expert witnesses, the filing fees, the discovery — and those costs are repaid from the recovery. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing. Call 1-888-ATTY-911. A live person answers 24/7. Hablamos Español.
Can I still sue if the oil company says it followed all the rules?
Yes. Compliance with a regulatory minimum is not a defense to negligence or to strict liability for abnormally dangerous activities in Texas. The Railroad Commission itself — the agency that wrote the rules — said in February 2024 that the injections it permitted have resulted in widespread pressure increases that may harm freshwater resources. When the regulator says the permitted activity is causing harm, the permit is not a shield. And the new rules effective June 2025 — requiring operators to plug older wells within a half-mile of new injection wells — are an implicit admission that the old rules did not adequately protect water supplies. Following the old rules does not mean the old rules were enough.
What if the well that contaminated my water was already plugged?
A plugged well showing positive pressure is not actually plugged — and the person who said that was logging damage at the Crane County ranch where pressure gauges read 800 PSI and as high as 1,300 PSI. If a well was improperly plugged — or if the plug failed because of underground pressure from nearby injection operations — the company that was responsible for plugging it may be liable for the failure. The pressure forced produced water through the failed plug and into the aquifer. The company may argue the plug was adequate when installed, but if injection operations from another operator caused the pressure that breached the plug, both the well operator and the injection operator may be liable. This is why identifying every defendant in the chain matters.