Hollister, Calif.: San Benito Rising, a grassroots group representing residents across the county, has gained an important endorsement for their initiative to ban fracking and extreme extraction in San Benito County: California State Senate candidate Shawn Bagley attended the group’s recent meeting to say that he is with them.
Bagley is a Salinas businessman who runs an independent produce brokerage that connects farmers to buyers across the world. He is very concerned about California’s water crisis. He will be running against District 12’s incumbent Anthony Canella, R-Ceres.
Members of San Benito Rising come from New Idria, Pinnacles, Tres Pinos, Paicines, Indian Canyon, Hollister, San Juan Bautista and Aromas. This all-volunteer group seeks to protect local water and health, as well as the agriculture and tourism of their area.
If they succeed, it will be California’s first citizens’ initiative to ban high intensity petroleum operations (fracking, cyclic steam injection, acid matrix stimulation and acid fracking) in a “frontline county,” where drillers have already started to tap into the oil and gas hidden in the depths of the Monterey Shale and other formations found in San Benito County.
Hydraulic fracturing, known as “fracking,” is highly controversial because it entails injecting toxic chemicals, sand and high volumes of water deep beneath the earth. In states such as Colorado, Texas and Pennsylvania, fracking has been linked to the deaths of ranch stock and wildlife, and illnesses in humans living close to gas wells. In California, techniques such as cyclic steam injection and acidizing have been combined with fracking in the fossil fuel industry’s arsenal of dangerous extraction techniques. The fossil fuel industry is the only industry in the nation that’s exempt from the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, as a result of the 2005 “Halliburton Loophole” pushed through Congress by vice president Dick Cheney.
San Benito Rising wants the people of San Benito County (rather than the politicians) to decide on their November ballot how much risk they want to be exposed to – in the form of toxic chemicals in their water supply.
Since the San Benito County Board of Supervisors revised their “Gas & Oil Ordinance” last summer, oil companies have requested permits for several new wells. This ordinance gives drillers bargain-basement prices to drill at will in the ag-heavy county where good ground water is scarce for local ranches, farms and vineyards.
Citizens in communities across the U.S. have started to use the “home rule” powers of local government to protect their communities from fracking and other high intensity petroleum operations. Home rule allows local jurisdictions to pass laws, for instance, zoning ordinances or general plan amendments to keep heavy industry out of greenbelts or residential areas. Many citizens in eastern states, have successfully pushed their local governments to use zoning and their general plan to ban fracking from their communities. California’s ballot initiative process provides a powerful tool for citizens to exercise home rule directly when other avenues are blocked.
Bagley adds his name to the growing list of well-known people in the area who are making their views against fracking and extreme extraction known. Recently, Supervisor Robert Rivas also endorsed San Benito Rising’s initiative.
For more information, call San Benito Rising at 831-693-4533 or go to www.sanbenitorising.org.