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More than 25 percent of fracking’s toxic mix comes back up, often contaminated with radioactive elements and unusable for other purposes.
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But despite these ongoing concerns about California’s scarce water resources, fracking requires millions of gallons of water per well that, once “produced” (the industry’s term for contaminated), is essentially lost.
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Farmers anxiously await their allocation while citizens worry how much they’ll have to pay for water. Every year we closely watch precipitation and snowpack levels. Anything accelerating it, like fracking for oil as dirty as tar sands oil, makes us highly insecure.īut the biggest immediate impact of fracking is to our water supply. Climate change’s destruction is already here. Rather, it requires planning for a sustainable way forward for the planet. Plus, because the crude oil locked away in the Monterey Shale is extremely dirty, it won’t meet California’s own standards so will have to be exported.Įnergy security doesn’t mean exploiting fossil fuels until supplies run out. Recent studies have found that the methane emissions released in fracking operations contribute to global warming as much as coal, or even more. But if plans to expand fracking of the Monterey Shale proceed it will completely undo the progress made with AB 32. When California passed AB 32 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, it was seen as an environmental leader. The only obstacles to this economic nirvana, they say, are pesky environmentalists. California fossil fuel proponents paint a rosy picture: a utopia with endless fossil fuel supplies, boundless economic riches for state coffers and jobs. Anyone who drinks water, eats food, breathes air or aspires to true energy security should oppose it. Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, is fraught with documented incidents of water and air pollution, induced earthquakes, crop losses, loss of insurance, property foreclosures, and health risks.