Agency leaders admit big failure to protect water from oil pollution

Agency leaders admit big failure to protect water from oil pollution

Anti-fracking coalition responds to Senate hearing on oil regulations

by Dan Bacher

The California State Senate held an oversight hearing in Sacramento on March 10 to examine why California oil regulators issued hundreds of illegal permits that allowed the oil industry to inject toxic wastewater directly into protected aquifers. During the hearing, state and federal agency leaders admitted that that they failed to protect California's precious water supplies from fracking and other methods of oil extraction.

The hearing was held the same day the that the Environmental Working Group released a report revealing that the recent discovery of high levels of benzene in wastewater from oil and gas fracking operations in California turns out to be just the tip of the iceberg. "An extensive review of a year-old state data by the Environmental Working Group has found that wastewater from hundreds of fracking operations was heavily contaminated with a toxic stew of chemicals known to cause cancer, reproductive harm and nervous system damage," according to the report. (http://www.ewg.org/release/california-s-fracking-wastewater-full-toxic-chemicals)

Speakers at the Joint Hearing of the California Senate Natural Resources and Water and Environmental Quality Committees included Mark Nechodom, Ph.D, Director, Department of Conservation; Jonathan Bishop, Chief Deputy Director, State Water Resources Control Board; Matthew Rodriguez, Secretary, the California Environmental Protection Agency; and John Laird, Secretary, the California Natural Resources Agency.

"We all fell down on the job," admitted Director Nechodom. He also said engineers at the Department of Conservation's Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) monitoring wastewater injection were "not fully qualified."

Legislators questioned State Water Resources Control Board officials why they allowed the oil industry to operate oil injection wells adjacent to aquifers with high quality water.

"We relied on their expertise," Jonathan Bishop, chief deputy director of the board, said, referring to DOGGR. "In hindsight, maybe we should have done independent analysis. We didn't."

Before the hearing, a news release from the California Natural Resources Agency touted the "significant progress made by water quality and oil recovery regulators on ensuring the protection of drinking water," noting that the U.S. EPA had approved the state's plan to "move forward."

“Protecting human and environmental health and safety are our top priority, so we appreciate the U.S. EPA’s approval of our plan to move forward,” said Secretary Laird. “We are working closely with our federal counterparts to ensure that now and in the future the public and an important part of our economy can be protected and in balance.”

The hearing, "Ensuring Groundwater Protection: Is the Underground Injection Control Program Working?,” took place as California continues in a record drought and the oil industry is planning to expand the environmentally destructive practice of fracking in California.

Representatives of Californians Against Fracking weren't impressed with the state's plan approved by the U.S. EPA - and released the following statement at the conclusion of the hearing about the oil regulators’ failure to protect groundwater from oil industry pollution. The group called on the regulators to immediately shut down all illegal injection wells.

“The ongoing contamination of California’s drinking and irrigation water with toxic oil industry waste fluids is yet another example of why oil companies can’t be trusted to operate while ensuring the protection of our communities’ health and the environment,” Dan Jacobson, State Director of Environment California said on behalf of Californians Against Fracking.

“Years of negligence by state regulators as oil companies have ramped up the use of dangerous methods like fracking have compromised our most precious resource—water. All illegal injection wells need to be shut down immediately to stop the ongoing damage and Gov. Brown needs to put a system in place to ensure regulators are enforcing laws meant to protect our water and health. Allowing more fracking and other new techniques will compound this crisis. That’s why more than 150 groups have petitioned Gov. Brown for an immediate halt to fracking and other dangerous oil development," said Jacoboson.

At the hearing, state oil regulators also admitted that they allow cyclic steam injection to routinely occur at pressures high enough to crack the formation, in violation of state and federal law, according to Jacobson.

"The state’s top water regulator also confirmed that drinking water aquifers have been contaminated with oil industry waste fluid," noted Jacobson. "In addition, while some limited testing of nearby water wells has been conducted, that the state lacks complete information on water wells and so cannot guarantee that all at-risk water wells have even been located."

Background materials and video link available at http://sntr.senate.ca.gov/2014informationaloversighthearings

The oil industry is the most powerful corporate lobby in Sacramento - and it has dramatically increased its spending in recent years as it faces growing opposition to the expansion of fracking and other extreme oil extraction methods in California. The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) spent $8.9 million on lobbying state officials in 2014, nearly double what it spent in the previous year. WSPA spent $4.67 million in 2013.

From 2005 to 2014, the oil industry spent an astounding $266 million influencing the Governor, the Legislature and other California officials, according to Stop Fooling California.

For an in-depth investigation of oil industry spending and influence in California, please read my article in the East Bay Express: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2015/02/06/big-oil-group-spent-89-million-last-year-lobbing-jerry-brown-and-california-officials

Californians Against Fracking is a coalition of about 200 environmental business, health, agriculture, labor, political and environmental justice organizations working to win a statewide ban on fracking and other dangerous extraction techniques in California. Follow @CAagainstFrack on Twitter.