Councilman Reeve is at it again, and he is completely overlooking what is happening around us.
The Earth can sustain about two billion of us. We are now at seven billion and counting and our city's population is growing right along with the rest of the world.
Seventy percent of our world is covered by water, but only one-percent of the water is potable.
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Our reliance on fossil fuels has caused the Earth to warm, and this global warming is causing major changes in our climate. The results are more severe storms, extended severe to exceptional droughts, extended heat waves, longer fire seasons, and smaller snow packs each year.
Our population is growing beyond the capabilities of the planet to provide for us. Lakes Powell and Mead are drying up. Look at the NASA/NOAA satellite photos taken annually since 1985. The lakes are less than 1/3 their 1985 size. Sometime between the end of the year and 2021, lakes Powell and Mead will be dry lake beds if our population continues to increase and the drought continues.
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Seventeen towns in Northern California are running out of water. Santa Cruz just announced a stage III water crisis, limiting citizen's water usage to just 50 gallons per day.
Yet, despite the drought, the State is allowing hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to expand. Fracking a single well consumes between three- and five-MILLION gallons of water. You can frack a well up to 18 times, increasing the water consumed to 54 to 90 MILLION gallons of water. Drill 1,000 new wells and the water consumed increases to 54 to 90 BILLION gallons of water. That water comes out of the water coming down the aqueducts to Southern California, 70% of which goes to agriculture and the remaining 30% is for our use.
We were told that the methane released in the Los Angeles basin was about 3%. It is actually about 17%, which means additional heat will be trapped. The result most-likely will be the drought will continue.
You complain about our water bills, but you don’t seem to have a problem purchasing bottled water at Ralphs or Vons at 900 times the cost of the same amount of water coming out of your water faucet at home.
What do you think is going to happen when our local water districts can no longer provide us the water we need to live? Not only will we be rationing water, but we’ll be paying higher prices for it.
I have written dozens of times asking you and the council to pass the resolution to ban fracking in San Juan Capistrano. There is no fracking going on here. I know that, but I also know that if every city were pass a ban, Sacramento would have to rethink what it is doing to our state and us.
The resolution is really quite simple and straight forward –
“It is hereby resolved that the people of San Juan Capistrano, California, 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 formations, 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.”
Mr. Reeve, you could introduce the resolution and get it passed, and the press would report on it, sending a clear message to Sacramento. Ask San Clemente and Dana point to do the same, and the message would be even stronger. Do the right thing for a change.
