School Board member Laura Chardiet is Culver City’s best-known link to show business among elected officials, but it is freshman City Councilperson Meghan Sahli-Wells who will be going on stage tomorrow night.
At 7:30 at the historic Aero Theatre, Montana Avenue, Santa Monica, Ms. Sahli-Wells, fellow Westside activist Paul Ferrazzi of the Citizens Committee for a Safe Community, and Dr. Clyde Tom Williams of the Sierra Clubwill ponder questions from the audience about fracking following the screening of two films warning of the dangers of the oil drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing.
On Fracking Awareness Night, “Gasland,” the two-year-old Oscar-nominated documentary by activist/filmmaker Josh Fox, will be the centerpiece of the program along with a second, more abbreviated documentary, the self-explanatory “The Sky Is Pink.”
Ms. Sahli-Wells said the community awareness program grew out of the June 12 state-sponsored fracking information-gathering at City Council that drew an overflow crowd of 450, a record that may never be matched.
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After that hugely emotional evening when DOGGR, the Dept.of Gas and Geothermal Resources, took comments from dozens of fracking critics, Ms. Sahli-Wells was contacted by tomorrow’s program sponsors, the American Cinematheque, Citizens Coalition for a Safe Community, Transition Culver City, Food & Water Watch and the Sierra Club.
Noting the summer-long national coverage that fracking has attracted, “I am really glad attention is being brought to this process and the fact it is happening here,” the Council member said.
“My goal will be to let people Know fracking has come to the largest oil field in the United States,” the Inglewood Oil Field, just outside of Culver City’s southern border.
“People also should know the oil field happens to be on a fault line,” significant, says Ms. Sahli-Wells, because many opposed to the drilling method believes it hastens or directly causes earthquakes.
“There needs to be greater awareness, and I am grateful for the opportunity to bring it to a wider audience.”
Tomorrow’s double feature is intended just to spark initial interest. “One evening of education is pretty short,” Ms. Sahli-Wells said. “This is just the beginning.”
She herself is a relative newcomer to the anti-fracking wars spotted across America this summer.
Mr. Fox’s “Gasland” was Ms. Sahli-Wells’s introduction to the ghastly threats she came to believe fracking poses.
See http://sites.google.com/site/ccfascorg/),
