[Editor’s Note: One of the community’s most vigilant anti-fracking activists sent the following message to her followers after City Hall’s announcement yesterday that the City Council will consider a resolution seeking a statewide fracking moratorium and a possible hometown ban on Monday evening at 7 in Council Chambers.]
We invite you to appeal to the City Council on Monday evening on behalf of all our children and citizenry who live around and near the Baldwin Hills Oil Field to:
Ban Fracking in and Under Culver City.
We ask our elected officials to carry out their moral responsibility to safeguard our welfare, especially our basic vital needs for clean air, safe drinking water and stable, non-toxic land by prohibiting fracking under whatever name or form in and under Culver City.
We call on our leaders to ask the L.A. County Board of Supervisors and the state to do likewise until these oil and gas extraction procedures are proven safe for this highly unstable land known the Baldwin Hills/Inglewood Oil Field.
We do so for the following reasons:
1. The Baldwin Hills Oil Field and Culver City lie within an active 7.4 earthquake zone.
2. The Baldwin Hills are geologically unstable land.
3. The high pressure hydraulic fracturing (HF), gravel packing, water injection and other completion procedures (generically called fracking) used to horizontally drill for oil and gas, are relatively new ways of fracking,
4. These new, experimental procedures are known to trigger tremors and earthquakes, as in Arkansas, Ohio and elsewhere.
5. Your constituents and more than 300,000 residents living on or around the Baldwin Hills will be put at risk, some of which have been realized in the Los Angeles Basin.
6. Any miscalculations, failures or accidents in this drilling process could trigger a land-locked inferno and catastrophe similar to the 2010 oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
7. A ban on fracking helps prevent an oil production triggered disaster at the Baldwin Hills/Inglewood Oil Field.
8. Our schools, many of our families, restaurants and businesses are in the toxic odor danger zone as per L.A. County's 2008 EIR.
9. Any such disasters could spew many radioactive materials and toxic chemicals for days.
10. Exposure to these toxins would affect the lungs, eyes, nostrils, mouths and throats of our children, students, staff, ourselves, the citizenry and anyone in the area.
11. Emissions from the proposed fracking processes impact health and can cause nervous system disorders, cancers, impairment of learning ability, cognitive disorders, asthma and pulmonary problems.
12. Even with due diligence, many fugitive emissions from this field do not evaporate or mix well – and especially with this area's early morning coastal marine layer, such emissions would remain blanketed, trapped in the air our children breathe on their way to school and at play.
13. Industry data indicates the likelihood of toxic emissions coming through new well casings failures and coming through virtually every well after 20 years.
14. Realized risk of aforementioned toxic release of noxious odors blanketed Culver City and West Los Angeles Community College in 2006, and release of methane plus other toxins in 2010.
15. Over time, the buildup of continuing emissions can create cancer clusters and other serious health problems.
16. The industry's and regulators’ lack of transparency, labeling its chemical compounds “trade secrets” is generating legislation in Pennsylvania and Ohio to protect oil companies currently using a range of these not-yet-proven-safe fracking processes and chemicals (rather than people-safe), imposing gag orders on physicians and the medical industry regarding disclosure to health officials, and even to children's parents regarding the toxins or neuro-chemicals found in blood tests from exposure to such emissions.
17. This unconventional type of well activity contaminates aquifers with waste products and/or well casing leaks.
18. The oil field sits on aquifers that American States Water uses for residents of Baldwin Hills.
19. According to EPA estimates, these fracking procedures use two to five million gallons of water per well fracked. (Note: Industry is researching ways to do waterless and flare-less fracking.)
20. The oil producer, Plains, Exploration & Production company, PXP, and Halliburton (chemical injection), even with the risks associated with its current operations, have not provided the schools and surrounding communities with effective evacuation and shelter-in-place trainings.
21. The Halliburton loophole currently pre-empts many of the EPA's environmental regulations regarding the safety of our drinking water, as well as air quality and fair compensation in case of injury.
22. Neither PXP nor Halliburton has insured or provided our municipality and school districts with monies sufficient to compensate for a worst-case realized risk scenario of injuries, death, and damaged or destroyed property.
For all of these aforementioned reasons and risks, we ask our local governments and the state of California to prohibit fracking of whatever form or under whatever name until these oil and gas extraction procedures are proven safe for the Baldwin Hills/Inglewood Oil Field.
Contact us at MakeCCSafe.com for documentation/end notes and references for each reason listed.
Our air, water and safety are at stake
Update from Citizens Coalition for a Safety Community, Frack Free Culver City, Food & Water Watch, Sierra Club, Cal-Frack Group, Moms against Fracking+ Dads, too, Transition Culver City, Baldwin Hills Oil Watch and the Culver City Democratic Club
What happened?
On Jun 12, more than 400 people, with professionals from many fields presented overwhelming evidence to state regulators from the Division of Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) that hydraulic fracturing/fracking in our nearby Baldwin Hills oil field is too risky, puts us all at peril and must be banned.
Where it's at
Culver City Mayor Andy Weissman and the City Council heard us. They will be focusing on fracking this Monday night at the City Council meeting to follow up on a motion to send a resolution to the County and the state to ask for a moratorium on fracking.
What to expect
Legislation can take years. PXP could start fracking before then, as they have already. Unless we act now, we must accept consequences of inaction. Thinking someone else will make things right for you in the event of dangers that already have affected other parts of our country may have you and everyone living around this oil field getting too little too late in respect to damages and possible loss of life. It is two years since the blow-up in the Gulf of Mexico. People still are sick, businesses ailing. Let's be wise and learn from their tragedy.
Let the City Council know that you want a ban on fracking in and under Culver City until independent (not industry-skewed) research can prove it is safe.
No matter where you live, come tell Mayor Weissman and the Council that you, too, will take a moral stand with them to address Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and Gov. Brown, demanding a fracking ban on this very unstable land, the Baldwin Hills/Inglewood Oil Field.
Your presence will help our elected officials remember to put the lives of all 300,000 of us who live around or near this field to put our lives before any other considerations.
To do anything else would be unconscionable.
Contact us at MakeCCsafe@gmail.com
For more information
Read Sunday, June 24 Los Angeles Times, pages A27-28, “Their Shifting landscape” (shows proximity of homes to oil field and picture of a house with structural damages owners believe may be oil drilling related)
Also read http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120608,0,1622100.column (Fracking “trade secrets”)
Remember there is free parking under City Hall. For those unable to attend, address written comments to Mayor Weissman and the City Council. Ask they be read into the record by the City Clerk, Martin Cole martin.cole@culvercity.org Or mail them to Culver City Hall, Attn. City Clerk, 9770 Culver Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232.
