[img]2542|right|||no_popup[/img][Editor’s Note: Since Dr. Tom Williams will discuss fracking at this evening’s 7 o’clock meeting of the Culver City Democratic Club (See The Lowdown), the following has been excerpted from this month’s club newsletter.]
Q: 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.
Q: Where is fracking being done in California?
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.
Rising oil prices are driving up interest in exploiting oil in the Monterey Shale using extreme fossil fuel extraction techniques such as fracking. This geological formation under the San Joaquin and the Los Angeles basins may hold a large amount of dirty, carbon-intensive oil.
Q: How does fracking worsen climate change?
Fracking and similar techniques often release large amounts of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas that is at least 86 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Fracking also allows access to huge fossil fuel deposits that were once beyond the reach of drilling. In California, rising oil prices are driving up interest in fracking on the Monterey Shale.
Q. How does fracking pollute our air?
Fracking 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.
Q: How does fracking contaminate our water?
Fracking routinely employs numerous toxic chemicals, including methanol, benzene, naphthalene and trimethylbenzene. About 25 percent 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.
In conclusion:
Last September, Gov. 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 next January. DOGGR has proposed weak, industry friendly regulations that will do little to protect public health or the environment from fracking. DOGGR is also required to conduct a scientific study of the effects of fracking and other extreme fossil-fuel extraction techniques by January, as well as to develop an environmental impact statement by July. Think it’s irresponsible to draft regulations without knowing the potential threats of the activity that you’re regulating? We do, too.
The bottom line: Fracking is an inherently dangerous practice, and the only way to protect ourselves is to halt use of this toxic technique.
