Jury awards farming family $8.5 million
| Friday, Jun 05 2009 07:39 PM
Last Updated Friday, Jun 05 2009 07:39 PM
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A jury awarded Starrh and Starrh Cotton Growers $8.5 million in its groundwater pollution lawsuit against Aera Energy LLC Friday, Starrh's lawyer said.
That's about $1.5 million more than a jury previously awarded the company. The award was re-tried.
"We had obviously sought a much larger number commensurate with the actual 'benefit' obtained by Aera by reason of its wrongful use of the subsurface beneath SSCG property for storage and disposal of produced water," Starrh attorney Michael Stump said in an e-mail.
Aera's spokeswoman couldn't be reached Friday evening.
In the lawsuit, filed in October 2001, the Starrhs alleged Aera knowingly allowed some 600 million barrels of oil wastewater to seep into the subsurface of their farm. The water, which contains toxic chemicals, is forced out of the ground as a byproduct of oil production.
Starrh said Aera has been damaging water he'd like to use on his crops because it is less expensive than aqueduct water. Aera argued the water under Starrh farms has always been too salty for irrigation, so it's done no damage.
