[Editor’s Note: The writer responds to this afternoon’s announcement the City Council on Monday night will consider a resolution to ask the state to place a moratorium on fracking.]
Our organization, Citizens Coalition for a Safe Community, wholeheartedly supports the City Council's efforts to get Gov. Brown and the Legislature to impose a statewide moratorium on hydraulic fracturing under the following conditions:
• Until it can be scientifically proven that hydraulic fracturing, along with all the adjunct processes involved with it as used in oil and gas production, does not and cannot contaminate groundwater and surface water,
• That it poses absolutely no health and safety risks to residents, and
• Does not promote seismic activity or can trigger earthquakes.
Realistically, given the influence of corporate money on the climate of politics in Sacramento and Los Angeles County, we should not be surprised if we are forced to act on our own as a city.
Gov. Brown fired the Dept.of Conservation Director Derek Chernow and DOGGR Oil & Gas Supervisor Elena Miller at the behest of the oil and gas industry. The reason: Because their agencies had begun looking at the process of hydraulic fracturing and had started looking more closely at applications for drilling permits.
The new team that replaced them, Nachodom and Kustic, was hired to expedite new well- drilling permit approvals. There is a real issue of the credibility of both agencies here.
The ruling from Judge James Chalfant on PXP's challenge to the original unanimous decision of the City Council to impose a temporary moratorium on new drilling supports our rights as a city. If it should be decided that hydraulic fracturing is a threat to public health and safety, we may act accordingly.
Oil and gas reserves have been found by PXP's 3D sonar study of 21.3 square miles underlying Culver City residential neighborhoods. To allow the use of hydraulic fracturing under family homes and city infrastructure is just asking for negative impacts. This should not be acceptable by anyone’s standards.
People should also realize that the Monterey Shale formation in California is considered the largest shale play in the United States. It will be exploited by the oil and gas production industry using hydraulic fracturing in rural areas near streams and rivers that are all part of our ground and surface water sources. It will also destroy and contaminate the natural beauty of any of the 15.2 million acres of California public lands that the Bureau of Land Management decides to lease for oil and gas production.
In our drought-prone state, which is more important to sustaining life, clean water or oil and gas?
Mr. Ferrazzi, Executive Director of Citizens Coalition for a Safe Community, may be contacted at www.ccfasc.org
