Re “Educating the Public About the Perils of Fracking”
She was glowing after Tuesday night’s successful Fracking Awareness program at the Aero Theatre, Santa Monica.
A couple of years ago, she, like many Americans, did not know fracking from frappes.
Then came environmental activist Josh Fox’s breakthrough alerting film, “Gasland,” warning a nation that any region allowing this accelerated form of oil drilling was threatening the health of its population and the firmness of its turf.
Ms. Sahli-Wells attended a screening, and she was won over.
She quickly has grown into a powerhouse voice for the well-organized Westside forces against fracking, especially since being elected to the City Council in Culver City four months ago.
By this week, she was on stage at the historic Aero with other mavens, explaining to a mixed crowd – activists and newly curious – why it is crucial, in her view, to be aware and armed with a maximum amount of information.
Numerous Communities
One of the significant achievements of the Fracking Awareness program, Ms. Sahli-Wells said, was that the crowd came not just Culver City – unofficially home base for the disputed Inglewood Oil Field – and hosting Santa Monica, but from numerous surrounding communities.
In response to a question about her benchmark for determining whether the evening was a success, the Councilwoman said:
“We achieved what we set out to do because the (three-person) panel was giving out fracking information to people had not heard of it before, who may have had no idea that it was being done in the region.
“For me, that was my goal. When I went to Sacramento a couple weeks ago for the last Dept. of Conservation hearing, I was asked to speak. The message I wanted to get across was that fracking is going on on fault lines in a heavily populated area.
“The Inglewood Oil Field happens to be the largest urban oil field in the United States. Then Tom Williams (fellow panelist) said it was the largest in the world.
“That is most important for people to know,” Ms. Sahli-Wells said. “For me, what the City Council asked the Dept. of Conservation and Gov. Brown to do is to stop fracking until we can get regulations in place, not just regulations but regulations that protect human health, the environment and regulations that can be enforced.
“It makes no sense to have regulations if no one is going to watch, if they don’t have the person-power to go out and enforce the law.
“The more people know what is going on, the more people will agree with the City Council when they make that demand.
“At this point,” Ms. Sahli-Wells said, “we need facts. The public needs them. There are too many unanswered questions for us to just go on with business as usual, as if ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. Everything is fine.’ No, it is not.”
