In October 2021, workers from a water treatment company irrigated a 10 x 20 foot test plot of scrubby grass on an oil well site near a Navajo Nation chapter house in northwest New Mexico. The grass thickened, grew and later shriveled under the high desert sun and drought. Even so, it nourished a statewide, petroleum-based controversy when locals learned that the company was researching “produced water,” a toxic byproduct of oil and gas development, as part of a program to search for new methods of treatment and disposal of the industrial waste. Daniel Tso, who was chairman of the Health, Education and Human Services Committee of the Navajo Nation Council at the time, says that, since hearing about the test plot, he and others have been working to stop all use of produced water from oil and gas production on the Navajo Nation “through the courts if necessary.”