State Condemns Trump Admin Decision to Impose Fracking

SACRAMENTO – California Attorney General Becerra today issued a statement in response to the Trump Administration’s decision to open up more than one million acres of public lands in Central California to oil and gas drilling, including hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

In June, Attorney General Becerra filed a comment letter responding to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM)’s draft supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS), describing it as deficient and detailing how the EIS failed to fully evaluate the project’s impact on the communities and environment of Central California, particularly Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare, and Ventura Counties.

“The Trump Administration’s Bureau of Land Management wants to expose more than a million acres of public land in Central California to drilling and fracking using a patently deficient environment impact study,” said Attorney General Becerra. “That’s not how we do things in California. We’re prepared to do whatever we must to protect the health and safety of our people. We intend to be good stewards of our public lands.”

On April 26, 2019, BLM issued a draft supplemental EIS evaluating its plan to open more than one million acres of federal lands to oil and gas leasing. Fracking is a procedure in which oil and gas producers inject water, sand, and certain chemicals at high pressure into tight rock formations to extract oil and gas. However while most of the injected fluid is water, the process also includes toxic chemicals into the earth that pollute nearby groundwater and must be brought back to the surface for above-ground storage.

Because of this a growing body of evidence points to fracking as a significant cause of water and air pollution and low-level seismic events. In Oklahoma, for example, earthquakes have increased 600-fold since fracking began in the state in earnest in the years 2008-2009. As a result of that increase Oklahoma now has more earthquakes each year than California does, and averages two earthquakes of 3.0 or greater magnitude each day. Similar results in the United Kingdom have resulted in a moratorium being declared on fracking absent scientific data to prove the entire process can be undertaken safely.

Air pollution and water contamination due to the toxic chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing also remain a significant concern, particularly where it is possible for the injected chemical compound, the contents of which are often not disclosed, to leech into aquifers, and particularly in areas such as the Central Valley where agricultural operations are heavily dependent upon both water quality and quantity.

Further, because fracking remains a highly water intensive process with each well requiring millions of gallons of water during its lifetime, questions remain as to the risk involved in opening areas such as the Central Valley to fracking where water supplies are already under significant stress.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.