Central to the challenged EIR analyses were two categories of water:  (1) municipal and industrial (M&I) water, which is essentially fresh, potable water used for those purposes; and (2) “produced water,” which is groundwater found in oil and gas reservoirs and brought to the surface with the extracted resources, which usually is saline, poor quality, and unusable for agricultural, residential, commercial or industrial usage without substantial decontaminating… [read post]