The most dramatic moment in the spirited exchange between fracking symposium organizer Tom Camarella and the City Council at last evening’s meeting came when he told them they had the authority to compel the drilling company PXP to testify in Council Chambers.
Suddenly, the large, mostly unfilled, room turned chillier.
With Councilman Mehaul O’Leary on holiday in his native Dublin, his four colleagues, by their body language and verbalization, seemed to collectively recoil.
There was no doubt the Council did not have an appetite for using this kind of force on PXP.
The clinching blow was struck by City Atty. Carol Schwab. While the provision indeed exists in the City Charter, she said, it was intended for more “serious” applications.
He Strongly Disagrees
“Let’s put it this way,” Mr. Camarella said. “What could be more serious than the health and welfare of this city? Whether or not it gets bankrupt in the future, whether or not there are cancer clusters, we know some kids in these schools, 50 percent of them, have asthma and inhalers. Fifty percent. That is a true study.
“Other things. We have true studies showing that hypertension and cholesterol are worse in these areas.
“We don’t have any baseline for our water qualities in the immediate area. Then we have from the state of California, in the Constitution, it specifically states how important water is. I know that whatever they are going to do with water when they drill, it’s going to migrate. Why? Because you have cracks and fissures all over this area. That is why we are in Southern California and we have earthquakes. If we have an earthquake, and we will because this is earthquake country, a lot of that junk that has been included in the drilling is going to come back up. If you are putting cancerous stuff in there, you are going to have cancerous stuff come up, and it is going to migrate into every single layer. The state says that water is precious.”
Mr. Camarella displayed a California Constitution document and began reading:
“It is hereby declared that because of conditions prevailing in the state, the general welfare requires that the water resources of this state be put to beneficial use to the fullest extent of which they are capable, and that the waste or unreasonable use or unreasonable method of use be prevented, and that the conservation of such waters is to be exercised with a view to the reasonable and beneficial use thereof in the interest of the people and for the public welfare.
“This shows you this water is extremely important,” Mr. Camarella said. “Why? We pay tremendous amounts of money for every drop of water that comes down here. We steal it from Mono Lake. We have the Colorado River. We get it from the aqueduct. Water is precious. Yet PXP is going to use one to five million gallons of water to frack one well. They can do that many times. Once it is fracked, what’s left over is called as Class II contaminant, and you can’t get rid of it.”
The Start of Trouble
For Mr. Camarella and other disappointed organizers of an intended fracking information symposium on Saturday morning, Aug. 4, potentially bringing together PXP on one side and activists against fracking on the other, the trouble began last Friday.
Plains Exploration & Production Co. said no to Mr. Camarella’s invitation, which suddenly deflated the intent and marketability of the symposium.
This severely weakened Mr. Camarella’s hand when he stood before the Council, not that there was a shred of external evidence.
Yes or no might have been of fractional consequence to the Council if the symposium had been staged at a different site. But organizers wanted Council Chambers both for televising purposes and also because it would vest the event in greater authority than just another meeting.
Council Unites
Displaying varying degrees of enthusiasm, the Council agreed to postpone a judgment on whether to allow Chambers to be used as a backdrop until after PXP goes public with a drilling study that was a condition of its legal settlement with the County and other parties a year ago this month.
That time, it was estimated, would range from mid-September to early October.
Behind the Reasoning
Rejecting Mr. Camarella’s pleadings to compel PXP to testify, Mayor Andy Weissman said that “it is premature and inappropriate to do that in the context of where we are.”
In different words, perhaps at another time.
“We are drafting a drilling ordinance,” Mr. Weissman said. “We have hired an environmental consultant on top of our environmental attorney.
“We have made written requests to PXP in a followup to a discussion we had at Council earlier this month, asking PXP for information. At minimum, they deserve the opportunity to respond to our questions.
“If they don’t respond at all, or we deem their response to be inadequate, or we ask for more information and they tell us to go pound sand, that is different.
“At a point in time, it may be appropriate (to compel). But it certainly seems to me you don’t start with that.
“The city is involved in a process of determining what the most appropriate oil ordinance ought to be. As part of that process, we have asked for information, specific questions, of PXP.
“We are not holding hearings. We are just seeking information,” Mr. Weissman said.
