“Fresnans Against Fracking” Formed To Fight Dangerous New Technology
by Robert Turner [This article first appeared in the July-September 2013 issue of Tehipite Topics] posted on March 13, 2015
Without collective action to stop it, California is poised to begin an explosive expansion in the extraction of oil from shale formations throughout the state using newly enhanced hydraulic fracturing techniques. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has been around for a long time, and is a driver in the current glut of natural gas, which the industry touts as a “clean” fossil fuel.
Of course, there is nothing clean about a gas that contributes to runaway climate change. Besides producing carbon dioxide on burning, when uncombusted natural gas (methane) leaks into the atmosphere it is 72 times as potent as carbon dioxide at heating the planetary atmosphere. The release of methane is routine when a well is started, and unknown but significant quantities are released from leaky pipelines and storage.
Recently adapted technology now deals with the more difficult-to-extract oil tars trapped within the cavities and pores of hard sedimentary layers, including the Valley’s Monterey Shale. New horizontal drilling techniques allow extractors to access vast areas underground from a single location. Rock layers are shattered by the injection of water, sand, and chemicals under high-pressure. Sand particles hold open the fissures while powerful solvents loosen the petroleum, and the pressure drives the toxic slew to the surface where the desired product must then be separated out and refined for use as fuel and chemical byproducts.
Despite accidental leakages in the past, the oil industry claims they have now perfected these techniques so that they are safe for the community. And yet the Energy Policy Act of 2005 specifically exempted fluids used in hydraulic fracturing from protections under the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, the Superfund Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Under this so-called “Halliburton Loophole” companies do not need to disclose the chemicals involved in fracking operations. The proposed Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act would repeal these exemptions.
The state government, which also wants to increase oil production, tries to assure us that the industry is heavily and sufficiently regulated. Well, its track record is not good. Now in court is a pattern-and-practice lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity, challenging state regulators for repeated exemptions of oil drilling from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
Despite assurances of safety, disastrous leakages and spills have already occurred. The public needs to understand that the greater pressures involved in fracking can lead to leaks at any level of drilling, not to mention the enormous pressures inherent in the underground environment that can cause leakages years after the projects are shut down.
And what to do with the fracking waste brought up. Only 20% of what is pumped up is oil. The rest will end up in permanent waste repositories on the surface, or pumped back into the ground to remain there, a mix of toxic natural organic compounds mixed with powerful industrial chemicals that we can only hope will stay where they are forever.
Fortunately, most California residents are sufficiently skeptical to want additional regulations on the industry before letting it continue with this method of extraction. While only 30% today want to ban fracking outright, many more favor a moratorium on fracking until more can be learned about the risks and dangers.
A broad coalition of environmental and social justice groups in south Central Valley gathered in Fresno to discuss strategy and coordinate activity against this new boom in fossil fuel extraction. Zack Malitz of CREDO Action told us that in other states an effective strategy has been to encourage the passing of local ordinances against fracking. In New York 200 local governments have banned the practice. While Gerry Brown could stop fracking with the stroke of a pen, he has indicated that he believes the administration, through the State Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), has sufficient regulatory control to allow the safe expansion of hydraulic fracturing techniques to mine the Monterey Shale.
The fifteen activists who organized that June 10 afternoon voted to join with the state coalition, Californians Against Fracking, by forming two new organizations, Fresnans Against Fracking and Visalians Against Fracking. Our concerns include:
- dangers of groundwater and surface water contamination both by the chemicals used in fracking and by the toxic byproducts of the natural resource,
- health concerns for the mostly impoverished communities around the drilling sites due to exposure to these chemicals,
- long-term control of industrial waste, both what has come to the surface and what has been left in the ground,
- increased air pollution from the trucks carrying water, chemicals and sand to the sites,
- reallocation of nearly a million of gallons of water designated for agricultural use in this region to every three wells in a process that leaves the water permanently unusable,
- social justice issues regarding the extraction of minerals from beneath lands where the owners may be unaware of the activity,
- the high potential for well casing failures years after the mining has ended and the extractors have disappeared from the scene,
- and, not least by any means, the impact on global climate and the consequent changes to the environment from vastly increasing our use of carbon-based fuel.
Fresnans Against Fracking faces a daunting task in convincing Fresno County residents to support making the Valley a “Frack-Free Zone.” We are up against a popular political will to embrace any enterprise that guarantees the
creation of new jobs when their local economy is depressed, regardless of adverse social and potentially dangerous environmental consequences. Without adequate insight into the risks fracking poses to invaluable natural and social
resources, current hardships will send the public running headlong into a disastrous future.
With underemployment up and down the Central Valley, the promise of millions of new jobs generated by the oil extraction industry is creating a strong current of local support for the rapid expansion of this newly revitalized industry. But the recent history of fracking across the U.S. reveals another story: all of the high-paying jobs go to outsiders, while locals suffer from quadrupling of rents and severe dislocation from the conversion of agricultural and residential regions into an industrial wasteland. The disparities between the “haves” and our poverty-stricken communities only grows.
The industry’s own preference for conducting business in secret is one effective weapon we can use against this risky technology. Lawsuits for environmental and health damage are frequently settled with non-disclosure pacts that prevent the public from getting access to the facts. If the oil industry is so secure in their insistence that they settle these cases as mere conveniences to save on the cost of litigation, while asserting that the facts do not support the claims made against the industry, then they should be willing to let these cases see the light of public scrutiny. Right now, concern for protection of trade secrets regarding chemicals used in bringing up the oil released through fracking is keeping the public from access to information about the dangers inherent in their use. Even when doctors are allowed to know about a chemical exposure that has created a health problem, they are forbidden to communicate their knowledge because of the industry’s proprietary hold on industrial secrets. “The industry is asking us to trust it on the one hand at the same time it’s gagging people who get sick so that they’re not allowed to talk,” says Robert Kennedy Jr., president of the environment group Waterkeeper Alliance.
The oil and gas industry complains that it will take forty years to transition off of petroleum. But look at Germany, which quickly shucked off its reliance on nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster that left hundreds of square miles uninhabitable for decades. Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the shutdown of 5 out of 13 nuclear power plants. Three years later, Germany had far exceeded its solar energy production goals and is exporting energy. Our transition from a fossil-fuel-based to a post-carbon economy is going to happen eventually. Sooner is better than later. Fifty years from now people will wonder why we didn’t tackle this problem earlier.