- The deaths of a rancher and an engineer are tied together by their connections to a tainted water supply and the small-town newspaper reporter trying to expose it.
- In desert town Cable Springs, skinny dipping teenagers are surprised by the corpse of local petty rancher Walter Burns. He was dumped after drowning elsewhere. the only car traces lead to the corpse in Las Vegas of natural gas company Conservo's engineer Richard Adams, who was hot and hidden in a dumpster. the trail leads back to Burns' neighbor Bill Gibson, who commits suicide in a spectacularly surprising way, desperate because of extreme pollution, most likely the result of Conservo's 'fracking'. All three had contact with the local one woman-newspaper maker.—KGF Vissers
- Three teenagers find the body of a man in the lake, and Langston and Nick investigate the murder. The victim is the rancher in Cable Springs Walter Burns. During the autopsy, Dr. Robbins realizes that the victim had several diseases. They also find that Walter had had several phone contacts with the journalist Rosalind Johnson, also from Cable Springs. Jim Brass and Langston interview her but she does not disclose her article to them. Soon the security engineer Richard Adams is found murdered by Nick and Det. Frankie Reed, dumped in the garbage of a motel, and they learn that he worked for the gas company Conservo Solutions. The further investigation of the CSI team leads them to the rancher Bill Gibson, who commits suicide in front of Langston, Nick and Det. Reed to show what is happening to his water. Now the CSI investigators have evidences that Conservo Solutions is responsible for the deaths; but how to prove it?—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- "CSI" - "Fracked" - Nov. 11, 2010
Three teens go skinny dipping in a sulfur spring and discover a dead man as they frolic.
The dude, Walter Burns, they discover upon autopsy was riddled with cancerous lesions but died of drowning. Not in the sulfur springs it turns out, however, as the water from his windpipe is different from the water in the springs.
Something of a loner who lived on a farm, whose wife died last year, had final and constant contact with a reporter with a small local newspaper. She won't tell Brass and Ray what they talked about -- she's working on a big story-- but does tell them to look into Walter's wife also being sick.
The next day the investigation turns up another dead body Richard Adams, found by Greg, Nick, and an assist from Detective Frankie Reed. Adams had ties to the reporter and to Walter.
Adams' wife doesn't want to talk about what her husband was talking to the pushy reporter about because she signed a non-disclosure agreement with the local gas mining company Conservo Solutions where Adams worked. He asks if she's been threatened. The wife shows Nick a goat's head that she received, Godfather-style, the day before her husband's murder.
An examination of the goat's head-- also riddled with pre-cancerous lesions-- leads Nick, Ray, and Detective Frankie Reed to another farm out in Cable Springs. There they find another local rancher, an elderly black man. When they hear a shot fired they pull their weapons. It turns out he just shot his goat, which was also sick. He's very upset. He explains that Conservo Solutions came to town offering money for mining rights, in his case $50,000 but their operations contaminated the water which is making everyone sick. That money only covered one round of his wife's chemo. He's mad that nobody cared about their problems before and says Walter was going to turn up proof that Conservo was poisoning everyone. He says he has nothing left. To prove his point he drops his cigarette down his water well and it explodes in a ball of fire, engulfing him and throwing the CSIs and Reed back.
The man dies and Ray and Nick try to figure out what's up with the explosive water. Ray turns on the well faucet and puts a torch on it and lights afire. The water contains methane and who knows what else. They realize this is what's making everyone sick.
Ray talks to the reporter off the record for background. She says Conservo killed Gibson and Burns because they figured out what was going on. She's sick too, it turns out. She says she's missing one piece of her story and asks him to look up "fracking" and to give him a call.
Hodges reports to Robbins all the horrible stuff in the water that Ray and Nick collected from the well. It made everyone in the area sick.
Catherine takes the news to the sheriff and says they need to warn the people of Cable Springs if the water is contaminated. He's hesitant.
Ray discovers that "fracking" is a way to obtain natural gas from shale rock. Some of the chemicals in the process go to an evaporation pool and the rest, if saftey protocol isn't followed, goes into the aquifer, i.e. the well water. The sheriff says he'll call the health department but still doesn't want to do more to the execs at Conservo Solutions. They finally break him and make him give them a warrant to search the place.
Nick and Ray head over to look at the trucks, which may have been used in the murders, and Ray asks after the evaporation pool. From a piece of fabric they find on a fence they figure out that Burns hopped the fence to get to the evap pool to get a sample for proof, someone saw him, drowned him in it and then dumped him in the springs.
Meanwhile Greg phones to say he has found the Conservo truck used in the murders complete with blood stains and gun inside and dead driver. Greg and Reed figure out Conservo murdered the driver too. Tying up loose ends and framing the dead driver for the murders.
After a chat with Conservo's lawyers the Sheriff says the case is closed since they have the "murderer." Brass and Willows still want to go after Conservo and get water from the evap pool, they know they're the ones behind it. The sheriff tells them to leave it alone. Catherine asks about the hit and run on the driver. The Sheriff says to keep the case open.
Ray goes to see the reporter. She's going to keep fighting Conservo even without proof just yet since she has nothing to lose. Ray has a present for her, a spot in a clinical cancer trial his friend is conducting.
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