Fracking California?
The Trump administration is starting the process of opening up large swaths of land in California to hydraulic fracturing. The Trump administration took the first steps on Wednesday towards opening up 1.6 million acres of public land in California to fracking and oil drilling, The Sacramento Bee reported. Environmentalists are concerned that fracking can increase the risk of earthquakes and contaminate groundwater
In a notice of intent published on the Federal Register Wednesday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said it would prepare an environmental impact statement on the use of fracking on 400,000 acres of public land and 1.2 million acres of mineral estate overseen by BLM in California counties including Fresno, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, The Hill reported.
The announcement follows a 2017 lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity. That lawsuit challenged a 2015 attempt by the federal government to finalize a resource management plan that acknowledged fracking. In its settlement, BLM promised that it would first provide an environmental impact statement before considering fracking.
Fracking has been documented in 10 California counties — Colusa, Glenn, Kern, Los Angeles, Monterey, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Sutter, Kings and Ventura. Oil companies have also fracked offshore wells hundreds of times in the ocean near California’s coast, from Seal Beach to the Santa Barbara Channel.
According to the U.S. Energy Administration, oil companies could drill as many as 25,000 fracking wells in our state — each one using about 10 times more water than a typical California family in one year. In Kern County, California’s major oil-producing county, 50 percent to 60 percent of new oil wells are fracked, according to estimates by Halliburton. And fracking may have been done elsewhere in California, since state officials haven’t monitored or tracked the practice until recently. Oil companies are increasingly interested in using fracking and other dangerously extreme fossil fuel extraction methods in the Monterey Shale. This geological formation under the San Joaquin and the Los Angeles basins may hold a large amount of extraordinarily dirty, carbon intensive oil.A federal judge ruled in 2013 that the BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act by issuing oil leases in Monterey County without considering the environmental dangers of fracking.
“By allowing offshore drilling in more of our coastal waters, the Trump administration increases the chances of a dangerous oil spill. Opening these areas to drilling endangers sea life including whales, dolphins, and sea turtles, as well as the life and livelihoods of Californians and all Americans in coastal communities.” said Dan Jacobson with Environment California.
So, what is fracking? Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a method of oil and gas production that involves blasting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and toxic chemicals, under high pressure deep into the earth. Fracking breaks up rock formations to allow oil and gas extraction. But it can also pollute local air and water and endanger wildlife and human health. Fracking routinely employs numerous toxic chemicals, including methanol, benzene, naphthalene and trimethylbenzene. About 25% of fracking chemicals could cause cancer, according to scientists with the Endocrine Disruption Exchange. Evidence is mounting throughout the country that these chemicals are making their way into aquifers and drinking water. Water quality can also be threatened by methane contamination tied to drilling and the fracturing of rock formations. This problem has been highlighted by footage of people in fracked areas setting fire to methane-laced water from kitchen faucets.
Fracking can also expose people to harm from lead, arsenic and radioactivity that are brought back to the surface with fracking flowback fluid. Fracking requires an enormous amount of water, and because fracking waste water contains dangerous toxins it generally cannot be cleaned and reused for other purposes. Especially during a historic drought, we cannot afford to permanently remove massive quantities of this precious resource from our state’s water supply. It can release dangerous petroleum hydrocarbons, including benzene, toluene and xylene. It can increase levels of ground-level ozone, a key risk factor for respiratory illness. The pollutants in fracking water can also enter our air when that water is dumped into waste pits and then evaporates. Air pollution caused by fracking may contribute to health problems in people living near natural-gas drilling sites, according to a study by researchers with the Colorado School of Public Health.
In September 2013 California Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 4, a weak fracking law that a Los Angeles Times editorial called “so watered down as to be useless.” The law requires the Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources to establish regulations beginning in January 2015. DOGGR has proposed weak, industry-friendly regulations that will do little to protect public health or the environment from fracking. If oil exploitation begins on a large scale in California, it will most likely happen through a combination of fracking and acidization. Acidization, another dangerously extreme fossil fuel extraction technique, is similar to fracking but employs hydrofluoric or hydrochloric acid to dissolve rock in order to release oil and gas. Acidization pollutes our air, and acid is a hazardous substance that can leak and cause deadly accidents.
“This step toward opening our beautiful public lands to fracking and drilling is part of the Trump administration’s war on California,” Clare Lakewood, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a news release from her agency. “We desperately need to keep these dirty fossil fuels in the ground. But Trump is hell-bent on sacrificing our health, wildlife and climate to profit big polluters.”
Residents of San Luis Obispo are even considering a ballot measure this November that would ban new fracking operations and oil wells in parts of the county that are unincorporated, though it would have no impact on what happens on federal land.
But unfortunately, when it comes to fracking, Gov. Jerry Brown is leaning the wrong way, so we need YOU to help us make the positive difference and stop this madness once and for all in he golden state of California. Your activism and our advocacy are a powerful combination and making a big difference on making sure more wells aren't drilled.
As always, we Thank you for your continued interest, support, encouragement and your contributions. We hope you stay tuned for more information and news we believe you may want to know.
