While environmentalists across the country are demonstrating against fracking and stutter-stepping governments are hesitant about responding to the summer-season outbreak of anger over the drilling technique, Culver City Mayor Andy Weissman offers his solution:
“A temporary answer would be for the state to impose a moratorium on fracking until something comprehensive can come forward. The nature of the moratorium, though, remains to be seen.”
Mr. Weissman is against mere community control.
His reasoning: Not only does Sacramento pack more authority than any City Hall but also because of communitities often have only partial governing power over peculiarly placed plots of land.
For example, only a corner of the Baldwin Hills Oil Field, the centerpiece of Culver City protests, is obliged to obey a City Council ruling.
“Local control is good, but I am not sure it would be effective in this case,” the Mayor says.
“How does local control work when you have a thousand-acre oil field of which we only control a hundred acres?
“Arguably, we could ban fracking in those100 acres. What does that mean for the remaining 900 if (the County) is unwilling to impose similar restrictions?,” Mr. Weissman wonders.
“For anything to be done effectively, it needs to happen at the state level to control, in our case, what goes on in the entire thousand-acre oil field.”
But what does a ruling from the state mean?
“There doesn’t seem to be a standard for what the regulations are,” Mr. Weissman said.
“It would seem to me, and I don’t know how you would write it into a bill, that there needs to be a higher standard. Any regulatory framework needs to assure the public that hydraulic fracturing operations are safe.
“Until governing regulations are adopted, the nature of them could be anything.
“We need assurance the regulations are going to be comprehensive and meaningful, not just informative.
“A hydraulic fracturing regulation could say:
“ ‘Tell us where you are going to frack, how long you are going to frack, and we will issue a permit.’
“That is not the type of comprehensive regulation I would think is appropriate. It needs to be more.”
One potential temporary solution is presently being applied by first-term Assemblymember Betsy Butler (D-South Bay), AB 972, co-authored by Holly Mitchell (D-Culver City):
http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120AB972&search_keywords=
