It was their dream home, a newly built 2,500 square foot modern farmhouse with a playroom that Mitch and Kara Meredith had been saving for 12 years to purchase for their growing family. During construction, the family wrote their favorite Bible verses on studs throughout the house. For four idyllic years at Darlene Lane, the couple hosted birthday parties for their two young daughters, who quickly became friends with other children living in Fort Gibson’s recently built subdivision.
movie screening
Join Frontier and ProPublica in Tulsa on May 20th for a public screening of a documentary film featuring the Meredith family.
Then, one night last summer, five weeks after the couple’s third child was born, their bathroom flooded.
When his 7-year-old son ran into the garage to report water all over the floor, Mitch assumed a pipe had burst or the toilet had backed up.
Then he went into the bathroom. A thick black liquid with an oily sheen coated the floor. Kara yelled from her bedroom to come quickly. The same substance was flowing from the floor next to the bed.
Mitch and several other family members battled the floodwaters all night, vacuuming up sludge and emptying buckets through windows. Black goo covered his arm. A shiny rainbow pattern covered the shoes. After pulling the bathtub away from the wall, Mitch saw material gushing through the foundation of the house. It was clear that this was not a plumbing issue.
Last August, a dark, oily liquid came up through the floors of Meredith’s home and flooded her bathroom, bedroom and closet. Video collage by ProPublica. Photos and video courtesy of the Meredith family.
Around 5 a.m., Mitch’s uncle turned to him. “I think it’s oil,” he said. The family called the fire department, and Carla rushed her three children, including an infant, to her grandmother’s house.
“And this is the last time we can go home,” Mitch said.
Mitch, Carla, and their two daughters, Tennessee and Lakely, are building a house. “We knew we had the perfect home,” Mitch said. The Merediths encouraged families to write Bible verses on the studs of their homes. “Our faith is the most important thing to us, and we wanted to capture that in the bones of the house,” Carla said. Mitch, Carla, and their two daughters, Tennessee and Lakely, are building a house. “We knew we had the perfect home,” Mitch said. Provided by the Meredith family: The Meredith family encouraged families to write Bible verses on the studs of their homes. “Our faith is the most important thing to us, and we wanted to capture that in the bones of the house,” Carla said. Provided by the Meredith family The couple’s third child, Fletcher, was born in July 2025. Forty days later, black, oily water surged through the foundation of the house. Provided by the Meredith family The couple’s third child, Fletcher, was born in July 2025. Forty days later, black, oily water surged through the foundation of the house. Courtesy of the Meredith family
Frontier and ProPublica reporting on oil and gas pollution in Oklahoma last year showed that old oil wells abandoned by the industry pose serious risks to public and environmental health. Officially, the state lists 19,000 orphan wells that state regulators are responsible for cleaning up, but federal researchers say the actual number is likely higher than 300,000.
Meredith’s home may have been built on top of an improperly plugged oil well drilled in the 1940s, according to state records. Then, on a fateful Saturday last August, something woke me up.
Mitch drilled a hole in the concrete foundation of his house in hopes of channeling the sludge from the house into his garden. It worked, and foul-smelling water poured out of the cavity and filled the deep trench they had dug.
Many of their possessions were destroyed. A strong smell of gas wafted through the house, permeating clothes, sheets, and mattresses.
After leaving Darlene Lane, the family moved four times in four months, sometimes paying the mortgage and rent at the same time.
At the beginning of the crisis, families pinned most of their hopes on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission is the regulator responsible for overseeing oil and gas, including pollution from the industry and clogged old wells. They wanted the agency to help them figure out what happened and solve the case.
It didn’t take long for their hope to turn to anger.
In a September phone call, Mitch discussed his case with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Courtesy of the Meredith family
Family members say state regulators have done little to help them.
“They wanted to act like it was going to go away,” Mitch said.
Jeremy Hodges, the commission’s head of oil and gas, met with Mitch and Carla at their home in October, more than a month after the flooding began.
When the team inserted a gas reading device into a hole in the bathroom floor where oily water continued to flow, it showed explosive levels of the gas, he said, according to recordings provided by the Merediths to The Frontier and ProPublica.
The local public works department also brought out gas reading equipment. The report said gas levels were found to constitute a “serious and imminent danger”.
State records say the old, unplugged well, which may be near or under Meredith’s home, is known to leak gas and toxic fluids.
Hodges also told the couple that authorities would likely have to demolish the house to locate and plug the well. Subsequent sampling carried out by the commission showed salinity measurements suggesting the presence of wastewater from oil and gas production. Other testing by the state Department of Environmental Quality found elevated levels of heavy metals commonly found in oil field wastewater, including barium and bromide. Mitch took the samples himself and paid an environmental lab to have them tested. The results also pointed to oil and gas pollution.
When his family left home last August, Mitch didn’t think he’d ever be able to return. Katie Campbell/ProPublica
But as months passed, authorities declined to say that the mysterious substance contaminating Meredith’s home was a byproduct of oil and gas production. The government simply referred to the pollution as “water” in official statements.
At a packed town hall convened in March after the family began criticizing the agency on social media, community members spent two hours berating Hodges and several other agency officials about the Merediths’ situation, pressing them about environmental risks and demanding action. About half of Oklahomans live within one mile of an oil or gas well.
“Would you like to live there?” a woman in the audience asked Hodges.
“I’m not going to answer that,” he replied, prompting jeers from the crowd.
“So you don’t want to answer the question of whether you’ll actually live in the house?” asked Mitch’s brother, Matt Meredith.
“That’s a hypothesis,” Hodges said. “I’m not going to answer that.”
“Lord, we just continue to pray that You would put heavy conviction in the hearts of these people and that they would do the right thing,” Kara prayed before a town hall meeting held by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission to discuss the contamination of the family’s property. Katie Campbell/ProPublica
Jim Marshall, administrator of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, said in front of a community center conference room that homeowners facing such incidents should file a claim with their insurance company. But Meredith’s lawyer says the family’s insurance company denied their claim last fall, citing pollution and water damage exclusions, without ever checking the damage. The Merediths sued their insurance company, American Mercury, which did not respond to questions about the case because the case is pending, and the developer, who did not respond to requests for comment.
At the public meeting, Marshall pointed out that there were once several ponds in the Merediths’ neighborhood and suggested that groundwater sources may be forcing liquid into the home. If oil and gas is not the culprit, responsibility for cleanup will be shifted to other state agencies. Mr. Marshall, Mr. Hodges and the agency’s lawyers repeatedly told the crowd that the agency was at the limit of its legal ability to assist the Merediths because the house likely blocked access to the well.
Jack Damrill, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, did not respond to questions about what the agency considered the source of the contamination, but said it “recognizes the seriousness of the concerns raised regarding the Meredith family matter and the broader public interest.” He said in a statement that the agency is “devoting significant investigative time, technical expertise and regulatory resources to reviewing the situation and will continue to assess new relevant information as it becomes available.”
Last week, the Oklahoma State Legislature passed a bill introduced by state Sen. Avery Frix in Meredith that would create a fund to compensate homeowners whose homes have been damaged by oil and gas pollution. Mitch said he hopes the bill will help them, but noted that the bill requires the commission to verify the existence of old wells, which officials have not yet done at the Merediths’ home.
On Darlene Lane, the flow of pollutants increased in late April and continues to seep into neighbors’ yards.
“What I’ve been asking from the beginning is for them to help us contain this disease,” Mitch said. “They refused to do anything.”
Nine months after being forced to evacuate their dream home, the family of five is crammed into a 900-square-foot, two-bedroom bungalow on Mitch’s parents’ farm, where the couple lived as newlyweds. The girls share a bunk bed. The baby is sleeping in Mitch and Carla’s room.
The Merediths live in a house less than half the size of their Darlene Lane home. “It’s been difficult for them,” Kara said of her daughters. “They don’t understand why we can’t just buy a new home. We have mortgages on homes we can’t live in.”Katie Campbell/ProPublica
The girls often ask to play with the neighbors they had to leave behind, along with many of their belongings. Their toys still line the shelves in Darlene Lane’s bedroom, waiting for their return. Wet clothes were left in the washing machine for months. Half-packed boxes litter the floor, evidence of the family’s panicked evacuation last August.
This house is like a museum of the Meredith family’s past life.
Carla and her children avoid visiting Darlene Lane’s home because of the methane gas and the emotional strain. Carla and her children avoid visiting Darlene Lane’s home because of the methane gas and the emotional strain. Katie Campbell/ProPublica “We’re in a situation where we can’t move on,” Mitch said. “We know we’re going to lose our home. Everything we’ve worked for is gone.” “We’re in a situation where we can’t move on,” Mitch said. “We know we’re going to lose our home. Everything we’ve worked for is gone.” Katie Campbell/ProPublica Mitch took matters into his own hands, cutting a hole in the side of his house to drain the liquid. He dug a pit and installed a sump pump to convert the flow into an aerobic septic tank. As of late April, cloudy pollutants were still flowing outside the house. Katie Campbell/ProPublica
Toxic wastewater from oil fields continues to overflow from the ground in Oklahoma. For years, residents have complained and struggled to find solutions. We need your help to understand the big picture of the problem.
