Re “PXP Community Meeting on Study – Nobody Is Budging”
I am an anti-fracking activist and a concerned resident. But I told myself to listen objectively to the geologist's report last night at Knox Presbyterian Church.
More than 200 of us residents from Culver City, Baldwin Hills and the general area had come to hear PXP's version of whether fracking in the Inglewood Oil Field would or would not be safe. The report of the PXP-funded study was already online. Many of us knew the authors' conclusion: The fracking study provided no evidence that fracking that oil field would be harmful.
Yes, I agreed with my friends and neighbors that a study purchased with PXP dollars lacks credibility. But I listened to the presentation with an open mind regardless.
Here's what I came away with:
• We residents have been primarily worried about fracking that is horizontal. But I was surprised to learn that the fracking done on two study wells was verticle. How can PXP use their study to tell us that horizontal fracking is safe?
* The study relied on data from a single instance of fracking on each of only two wells. But we know that each well can be fracked many, many times, and that the PXP plan is eventually to have hundreds of wells in place. At no time did the geologist talk about the cumulative impact of thousands of fracks. If a single frack leaves a certain amount of toxic chemicals in the ground, the water and the air, imagine that a huge amount of chemicals would poison the ground, water and air over time.
• The geologist employed by the firm hired by PXP was careful to speak only to the very narrow study done before, during and after two fracks. Wouldn't a truly neutral geologist, hired independently, have extrapolated from study data to tell us about the likely cumulative impacts to our environment over many years' time?
• The PXP-hired geologist essentially told us that two of our concerns were our fault for having moved to this area. When vibrations from oil field activities cause foundations to crack and land to slide, it's our fault for purchasing homes on unstable land. He neglected to say that without the vibrations the unstable land wouldn't have been a problem.
• He also told us that we should ignore our concerns about methane. After all we've chosen to live in an area that's home to one of the world's largest deposits of natural gas and oil, so of course there's going to be lots of methane underground. He neglected to say that fracking does disrupt the earth, allowing methane to escape. Without fracking, far more methane would remain underground.
• He told us that due to our particular geology, no water flows to or from the oil field area. His conclusion was that water polluted by fracking would not harm our drinking water. I don't want polluted water there – period. What if the water seeped through the earth and into water we do use? What about the rest of our ecosystem, the micro-organisms in the earth? They're important, too! As residents of a city, state, nation and the world, we're already poisoning our beautiful planet. Let's do so as little as possible.
Plenty more could be said. I hope people will go to the websites of Food & Water Watch and Citizens Coalition for a Safe Community.
Ms. Rona may be contacted at rebecca.rona@hotmail.com
