The federal government is resuming oil and gas leased for California after a recently released report found little evidence that fracking is dangerous. The Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, (which apparently seems to only be concerned with making sure corporations get free access and cheap leases to our national resources) said the report will be used to justify them issuing leases on public land next year.
Apparently the BLM has a much lower standard of evidence than even the most dimwitted among us. The authors of the study, from the California Council on Science and Technology, said this?about their own study:
“Its authors noted that they had little time and scant information on which to base conclusions, citing widespread “data gaps” and inadequate scientific resources for a more thorough study.”
The BLM is using the fact that the report found no evidence of water contamination from fracking in California to justify the renewed leases. However the scientist who directed the study points out that the reason for that is that they were given NO DATA about water contamination or the quality of water at fracking sites.
The BLM also is ignoring research conducted by the University of Texas at Austin that found?nearly thirty percent of fracking wells?appeared to?contaminate water with arsenic at several times over the legal limit. I guess because that is in Texas and the science isn’t real unless it is found to also poison our water.
The?report?said:
? “Investigators could not determine the groundwater quality near many hydraulic fracturing operations and found that existing data was insufficient to evaluate the extent to which contamination may have occurred.”
? “California needs to develop an accurate understanding about the location, depth and quality of groundwater in oil- and gas-producing regions in order to evaluate the risk of well stimulation to groundwater.”
? “No information could be found about the toxicity of about a third of the chemicals and few of the chemicals have been evaluated to see if animals or plants would be harmed by chronic exposure.”
What the BLM also seems to have completely overlooked is where the?water?for fracking is supposed to come from. Here is that information courtesy of Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory via the Los Angeles Times:
?”Because most fracking is done in a limited area, it can use nearly 100% of local water supply. Its environmental impacts can be devastating.”?
Also not mentioned in the rush to “drill baby drill” no mention is made of how this oil and gas will be moved to market. Right now, in?North Dakota, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of wheat and soybeans will rot, potentially driving up food prices. The reason? All the trains are being used to ship out oil.
California has some decisions to make: Is the fast money of shale oil worth the potential harm to our fragile water supply? Is it worth the continued contribution to climate change that fracking is making? Should we treat the?Oklahoma earthquakes?be treated as a warning sign? The decisions we make could decide the quality of life our children and grandchildren enjoy.
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