North Dakota pipeline operator Summit Midstream Partners admitted this week to criminal water pollution charges and agreed to pay a $36.3 million fine.
The firm pleaded guilty in federal court in Bismarck, North Dakota in a case that prosecutors called the largest-ever land-based spill from oil drilling reported Reuters.
The company admitted it was criminally negligent when in August 2014 that 29 million gallons of produced water, a waste product from fracking, spilled from its pipeline near Williston, North Dakota, contaminating the groundwater as well as more than 30 miles of tributaries of the Missouri River.
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