By Joanna Clark, San Juan Capistrano
For the past eight months, the Center for Public Integrity, InsideClimate News and The Weather Channel have been examining what Texas, the nation’s biggest oil-producing state, has done to protect its residents living near the Eagle Ford Shale from the industry’s pollutants.
What’s happening at Eagle Ford is important not only for Texas, but also for California, Colorado, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and other states where horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have made it profitable to extract oil and gas from deeply buried shale.
Fracking and acidizing, which are used to recover oil and gas from shale formation, as well as the use of injection wells for the storage of waste water and fluids, threaten our water supplies. Add the extended severe to exceptional droughts we are experiencing and runaway population growth and we’re on the fast track to a major catastrophe. Our water supplies are now threatened beyond anything California has experienced in more than 100 years. Our Governor, as well as a number of our elected officials in the state legislature, support the expansion of fracking throughout California, in essence, guaranteeing catastrophe.
During the past two years, several nations, many U.S. states, and other domestic and foreign municipalities have placed a ban or moratorium on fracking, including: France, Germany, Bulgaria, South Africa, Ireland, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Vermont, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. A long list of towns, cities and districts in California to do the same include, but are not limited to: Arroyo Grande; Berkeley, Carson; Culver City; Fairfax; Los Angeles; Los Angeles Community College District; Mar Vista Community Council; Marin County; Rampart Village Neighborhood Council; San Luis Obispo; and Santa Cruz County.
Efforts to get San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente and Dana Point to join this growing list of towns and adopt the following resolution have pretty much fallen on deaf ears. Why is it so difficult to get a simple statement that we “have a right to clean air, pure water and the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of our environment” added to our local regulations?
“It is hereby resolved that the people of San Juan Capistrano, Calif. have a right to clean air, pure water and the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. San Juan Capistrano’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the city of San Juan Capistrano conserves and maintains them for the benefit of all the people. Therefore, it is resolved that the technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, used to recover oil and gas from shale formation, acidizing, as well as the use of injection wells for the storage of fracking waste water and fluids, are permanently banned within the city limits of San Juan Capistrano and adjacent ocean.”
All you need to do is write your city council representative and tell them to protect our water supply, air and environment and support the ban on fracking.