Anonymous
Photo: City of Carpinteria
Source: Los Padres ForestWatch
On Monday, October 28, the Carpinteria City Council unanimously approved and adopted a resolution opposing the Trump administration’s plan to open 122,000 acres to new oil drilling and fracking on federal public lands and mineral estate in Santa Barbara County.
Acting on a request at a September meeting from Los Padres ForestWatch and a Carpinteria resident, the council requested staff to prepare a measure for consideration that would counter the plan which includes lands in the Carpinteria Valley adjacent to Los Padres National Forest near Cate School and Gobernador Creek, which flows through the city to Carpinteria State Beach.
“Oil development at this location would jeopardize the health and safety of Carpinteria schoolchildren, threaten wildlife and ‘America’s Safest Beach,’ degrade the city’s air quality, and put Carpinteria’s ground water at risk,” said Rebecca August, Advocacy Director at Los Padres ForestWatch
The plan will also allow oil drilling and fracking on lands along a tributary to Lake Cachuma, an alternate source of the city’s drinking water.
The council decided the matter before a full chamber. Over one-hundred Carpinteria residents sent letters urging the council to support the resolution. No letters or comments were made in opposition. Carpinteria joins Santa Barbara County and the Cities of San Luis Obispo and Ojai in submitting opposing resolutions to the project docket. Earlier this month, the Governor took steps to oppose the plan with the signing of AB 342, a law that bars the construction of pipelines or other oil and gas infrastructure to be built on state property to serve federal oil leases.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) received over 100,000 letters from California residents opposing the plan which would, in total, open over one million acres to new oil drilling and fracking across Santa Barbara, Ventura, San Luis Obispo, Kern, Kings, Tulare, Madera, and Fresno counties. The proposal ends a 5-year moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on federal lands in California.
“Allowing these lands to be opened for oil development until 2030 is a risky bet,” said August. “The current administration has prioritized oil development expansion on federal public lands. It’s critical that agencies use all available tools to protect community resources and public health as well as wildlife habitat.”
Great news!
Good, the oil company bums don’t belong in town or anywhere along the coast. They never cleaned up their patchwork of wells off Summerland Beach left over from a century ago and now taxpayers need to pay for the whole cleanup.
Fracking is such bad news I hope this works.
Basically, oil companies have never cared about cleaning up their messes.