PROTECTING OUR WATER

For the past eight months, the Center for Public Integrity, InsideClimate News and The Weather Channel have examined what Texas, the nation's biggest oil producer, has done to protect people in the Eagle Ford from the industry's pollutants. What's happening in the 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.
 
Hydraulic fracturing (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 fracking 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 are supporting the expansion of fracking throughout California, in essence guaranteeing a catastrophe.
 
A single-well can consume between 3 and 5 million gallons of water per frack

During the past two years, several nations, many U.S. states, and other domestic and foreign municipalities have placed a ban or a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, including: France, Germany, Bulgaria, South Africa, Ireland, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Vermont, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and a long list of towns, cities and districts in California, including but not limited to: Arroyo Grande, CA; Berkeley, CA; Carson, CA; Culver City, CA; Fairfax, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles Community College District, CA; Mar Vista Community Council Los Angeles, CA; Marin County, CA; Rampart Village Neighborhood Council, Los Angeles, CA; San Luis Obispo, CA; and Santa Cruz County, CA.

A single-well can be fracked up to 18 times; thereby consuming between 54 and 90 million gallons of water.
 
Efforts to get San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente and Dana Point to join this growing list of towns by adopting the following resolution have pretty much fallen on deaf errors. 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: 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 (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 substitute your hometown for San Juan Capistrano, in the above resolution, then call or write your City Council representative and tell them to support the above ban on fracking and protect our water supply, air and environment.