The enormous influence of the oil industry, the largest and most powerful corporate lobby in California, has allowed it to frack offshore waters in the Santa Barbara Channel over the past 20 years undeterred by state and federal state regulators.
These environmentally destructive fracking operations may be finally halted if the Center for Biological Diversity has its way.
The Center on December 4 filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Interior Department for violating three federal laws by rubber-stamping offshore fracking in California’s Santa Barbara Channel without evaluating its polluting effects on coastal communities or blue whales, sea otters and other marine wildlife.
The notice faults government officials for allowing oil companies to frack at least 21 times in federal waters off California’s coast with “no public consultation, no analysis of the environmental risks, and no determination of whether fracking is consistent with California’s Coastal Management Program,” according to a news release from the Center.
“Several offshore fracks revealed in federal documents took place in an area that’s part of a proposed national marine sanctuary. The government approved at least four fracks just last year,” the Center stated.
“The federal government’s turning a blind eye as offshore fracking threatens to poison our beautiful beaches and coastal waters,” said Miyoko Sakashita, an attorney and director of the Center’s oceans program. “We need offshore fracking stopped immediately before chemical contamination or an oil spill devastates California’s coastal communities and kills sea otters and other endangered marine wildlife.”
Sakashita said the oil industry has federal permission to dump more than 9 billion gallons of wastewater, including chemical-laden fracking fluid, into the ocean off California’s coast every year. Federal officials cannot even say how often fracking has happened the Santa Barbara Channel because the government has not adequately tracked the practice.
The Center’s notice seeks to compel the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to suspend all hydraulic fracturing off California’s coast and conduct a full analysis of fracking pollution’s threats to wildlife, public health, and the environment.
If the government fails to act, the Center plans legal action under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Coastal Zone Management Act.
Center scientists recently released a report outlining the dangers of toxic chemicals, air pollution and earthquake risk linked to offshore fracking. At least 10 fracking chemicals routinely used offshore in California could kill or harm a broad variety of marine species, including sea otters and fish.
Fracking in the state employs high concentrations of chemicals, including substances acutely toxic to mammals, according to new data from the California Council on Science and Technology.
How did this all happen? In fact, it’s because the regulators and the regulated are often one and the same in California.
In one of the biggest conflicts of interest in recent California history, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and leader of the campaign to expand offshore oil drilling and fracking in California, chaired the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create fake "marine protected areas" on the South Coast. She also "served" on the task forces to create the alleged "marine protected areas" on the Central Coast, North Central Coast and North Coast.
While Reheis-Boyd served as a "marine guardian," her husband, James D. Boyd, in yet another huge conflict of interest, sat on the California Energy Commission! (http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/...)
While grassroots environmentalists, fishermen and Tribal leaders blasted the alarming role that a big oil industry lobbyist played in the so-called “marine protection” in California, state officials and corporate “environmental” NGOs praised the corrupt process, funded by the same Resources Legacy Foundation, as an “open and transparent” process that created an “iconic network” of “Yosemites of the Sea.”
It’s no surprise that the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, the foundation that funded the MLPA Initiative, also funded the corporate “environmental” NGOs that backed the creation of so-called “marine protected areas” in Southern California.
In addition to her "service" on the MLPA Initiative panels, Reheis-Boyd also sits on the Marine Protected Areas (MPA) Federal Advisory Committee. (http://www.counterpunch.org/... )
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and media investigations by Associated Press and truthout.org reveal that the ocean has been fracked at least 203 times in the past 20 years, including the period from 2004 to 2012 that Reheis-Boyd served as a "marine guardian.” (http://www.usatoday.com/...)
The MLPA Initiative created so-called "marine protected areas" that fail to protect the ocean from fracking, oil drilling, pollution, military testing, corporate aquaculture and all human impacts on the ocean other than fishing and Tribal gathering. These "marine protected areas" are bad for sustainable fishermen, tribal gatherers and the public trust – and good for Big Oil, polluters and corporate interests. They have nothing to do with authentic marine protection.