[Editor’s Note: The writer delivered the following message at last night’s City Council meeting.]
Mayor Weissman, City Council members,
I live here in Culver City.
Mayor Weissman, I was so happy to see your ad from the last election that says:
“Who can we trust to protect the environment for our children?”
– and to read that you are a grandfather of three.
My husband and I came to Culver City from Youngstown, Ohio, where he grew up with no earthquakes. Now that they are fracking for oil there, Youngstown is on the map with more earthquakes in the past year –- even more than in California.
Fracking is threatening everyone's safety, and now the oil companies are also putting everyone's health in jeopardy.
If an Ohio bill passes, it prevents physicians from sharing any information about patients’ exposure to hydrofracking chemicals with their local health departments, first responders, or even anyone else who might have been exposed.
What happens if a child is taken to the pediatrician due to excessive nose bleeds, headaches or dizziness and blood is drawn to determine if any toxins are in the blood?
If it is determined that high levels of toxins are in the child’s blood, the pediatrician is not allowed to share with the parents the specific toxins because the legislators of Ohio have determined it is not the right of parents to know this information. It is more important for the drilling companies to safeguard their “trade secret” of the toxic chemical cocktail they use to frack each well.
Here is the full article. (http://www.mothersagainstfracking.org/ohio-senate-wants-to-gag-doctors-to-protect-fracking-industrys-bottom-line-2/)
My husband and I love our two kids and their many little friends.
This is why Maren Neufeld and I started a Culver City Moms Against Fracking group. Mayor and Council members, I invite you come to Vets Park on Friday morning at 10 o’clock.
We will have experts there to inform the moms and a neurologist, Dr. Khin Khin Gyi, to answer questions. I will be happy to introduce you to speak a few minutes, too, on what you will do to protect us.
I trust that each of you, as our City Council members, will speak out on Tuesday, June 12, at the (state-sponsored) community meeting about fracking (in Council Chambers). We need you to speak on behalf of all of our children, moms, dads, everyone who elected you and trusts you.
Speak out. Tell the state that the Baldwin Hills is too dangerous a place with over 300,000 people living on an active earthquake fault.
One serious fracking mistake can turn this city into a fiery furnace – just as it did in the Gulf of Mexico a couple years ago. Tell the State Dept. that the only regulation that makes any sense for this field, if they are regulating to protect our health and safety, – that the only thing that makes sense is to ban fracking.
We moved to Culver City because we love its beauty, its good schools and that ‘most everyone here is concerned about the environment. Mayor Weissman and City Council, we are trusting you to protect all this for us and for our children. Do not sell us out to the oil companies.
Too many elected officials have given in to corporate profits at the expense of the people who elected them.
Please stand up. You be the lawmakers who set the bar for the rest of our nation – saying that protecting our people and our health, safety and quality of life come first.
