San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action meeting, March 26, 2015
All About Fracking
How can such a bad idea be so readily considered for California?
PictureGraphic courtesy of Emily Underwood.

Thanks to everyone who attended the All About Fracking meeting with guest Peg Mitchell from San Diego 350.org and the Lake San Marcos Democratic Club.

From air pollution to groundwater contamination to unknown chemicals to earthquakes, we've all heard the cautionary tales about fracking from Pennsylvania to North Dakota to Oklahoma – where state scientists were told to suppress evidence of fracking-induced earthquakes.

Even in California, the evidence is in on how water is affected by oil and gas extraction. So how will fracking be any different?

You may have seen recent news related to wastewater from oil fields being emptied into aquifers, and hundreds of massive oil wastewater pools throughout the southern Central Valley – the very same area of the state where the most intense agricultural activity in California occurs.

All of this plays into the underfunded and lax oversight offered by the state, questionable attitudes among some resource extraction outlets towards good environmental practices in the Golden State, and the insanity of trying to justify a process as water-intensive as fracking in a state as notoriously dry as California, which is already in the midst of a punishing drought.

We know fracking is a bad move, but a number of high-profile California Democrats don't seem to realize it – despite the mammoth use of water in the process, something our state cannot afford with our deficit of clean water.
A Few Thank You Shout-Outs

A big thanks to member John Loughlin for shooting and putting together this video of Peg Mitchell's presentation, including slides from Peg's Power Point presentation.

Thanks also to club member and port commissioner Rafael Castellanos for his remarks regarding the Port of San Diego's recently-filed lawsuit against Monsanto (click here for video of Rafael's remarks), and Amirah Sadre of Iranian-American Democrats of San Diego.
All About Peg

PicturePeg Mitchell
Peg Mitchell of the Lake San Marcos Democratic Club and San Diego 350.org is one of the leading experts on fracking in California, and has aready given presentations to a number of conservation groups and organizations.

Like SDCDEA president Tommy Hough, Peg is a native of Pennsylvania, a state which has become the "poster child" for bad fracking and oil and gas extraction practices, and where the gas industry has run roughshod over the state thanks to the poor decisions and ineptitude of Democratic and Republican legislators alike – but to no one's surprise, much of the blame can be laid at the feet of the Bush administration.
Fracking, Cheney and the Bush Administration

PictureThe signing ceremony for the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
The Bush administration's secret March 2001 Energy Summit, chaired by none other than Vice President Dick Cheney, set in motion the process by which the EPA came to be excluded from fracking chemical oversight as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by the "rubber stamp" Bush Congress in July of that year.

The legislation undid any kind of requirement for gas and oil extractors to reveal specific "recipes" of fracking mixtures, including exemptions from the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 1972 Clean Water Act, 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act, 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, 1980 "Superfund" Act and the 1986 Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.

Despite the unusual list of exemptions, some state Democratic leaders have suggested fracking would be a good move for the Golden State, despite:
  • The mammoth volume of water use involved in fracking.
  • The questionable bounty of accessible gas in the state's Monterey shale in the southern Central Valley.
  • The persistent lack of knowledge and transparency among gas extractors about fracking chemicals.
  • Resultant air pollution.
  • Contamination of groundwater.
  • Oh yeah – earthquakes.
Picture
Graphic courtesy of Global Political Insight, design by Hannah Otto.