The San Joaquin Valley has reached a dead end in its fight to clean up a toxic contaminant from its drinking water, with residents now facing the prospect of footing the bill for a mess created by Shell and Dow products. Fresnoland reviewed internal Shell and Dow memos, court records, and state documents and interviewed key officials to uncover a decades-long environmental crisis enabled by both corporate greed and bureaucratic neglect. The documents show how the companies’ products contaminated nearly 20% of San Joaquin Valley drinking water with a substance the EPA rates as toxic as Agent Orange’s deadliest dioxin. The companies sold pesticides laced with 1,2,3-trichloropropane (TCP), a manufacturing waste from gunpowder and plastics production. Shell marketed the farming products as pure – a scheme that saved them millions in disposal costs. Over 25 years since discovering the contamination, state water officials have failed to even map how far and deep the cancer-causing chemical had spread into the Valley’s aquifers.