"SHAFTER -- One afternoon last fall, Tom Frantz cradled a video camera in his hand and pointed it at an oil well on the edge of this San Joaquin Valley farm town."

"Workers shuffled amid trucks and drilling equipment, preparing the site for hydraulic fracturing -- fracking, for short -- the controversial drilling method that has the potential to spark an economic boom in California and perhaps even free the state from foreign oil.

But Frantz recorded something less promising: oily-brown waste spilled from a pipe into an unlined pit near an almond grove, followed by a stream of soapy-looking liquid."

Tom Knudson reports for the Sacramento Bee June 30, 2013. [2]