Increasing attention is being paid to the growing danger of earthquakes in California that can be caused by the oil drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and by its associated “unconventional” techniques acidizing and steam-injection.

According to the website ShakyGround (March 2014), in California 83 current/new oil wells exist within one mile of an earthquake fault; 350 such wells are within 5 miles of a fault; 834 wells are within 10 miles of a fault.

Of course, the whole point of fracking is to “fracture” earth formations in a well’s immediate area (or to increase and hold open existing fractures) by blasting chemical-laced fluids and sand under immense pressure into rock formations.

We’ve known for some time that earth adjustments forced by blasted wastewater injection can trigger dangerous earthquakes. Other regions with fracturing wastewater disposal have experienced a 10-fold increase in quake activity.

And we know that in California more people, buildings, airports, highways, roads and bridges are at risk from earthquake damage than in any other state. Conversely, earthquakes can cause the concrete/steel casings of nearby “unconventional” oil wells to weaken, split and/or fail altogether, leaking untold amounts of toxic waste water into adjoining earth formations where they may “migrate” into aquifers communities use for drinking and/or irrigation.

Cornell University engineering professor Tony Ingraffea, called by The Ecologist “a leading pioneer in fracture mechanics” and by Time magazine (2011) as one of the “People Who Mattered,” has written that such contamination of drinking/irrigation water “is undeniably happening, has happened, will always happen. And it’s not rare.”

Even absent the increasing damage to humans, livestock and the environment earthquakes can initiate through fracking well failure, Professor Ingraffea’s research has shown that fracking wells will experience “failure or loss of integrity” from 6 to 7 percent in the first year and upwards of 20 percent within three years.

What is the federal government doing to protect us from these potential horrors? Nothing. What would you expect from the entity that exempted frack wastewater fluids from the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act?

What is Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration doing to protect us from this potential devastation? It has forced one of its own agencies to issue a “study” of possible water contamination in the state that its own director has said was not given sufficient time to prepare a scientifically reliable result, such forced publication timed to enable the Bureau of Land Management to avoid the greater strictures becoming effective next year, and to use the “study” to justify new fracking on federal lands.

The U.S. and California: Frick and Frack.

This lesson is one we have to understand. With regard to the dangers to our health and safety posed by these unconventional drilling techniques, our governments are not protecting us. It’s up to us to protect ourselves.

Ensuring the passage of Measure P, that bans fracking in Santa Barbara County, on Nov. 4 will give us that protection.

William Smithers
Santa Barbara