
Citing risks to public health and marine life, California Attorney General Kamala Harris and the California Coastal Commission filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the federal government's inadequate analysis of offshore fracking's threats to the California coast.
Feds Find Offshore #Fracking in the Pacific Would Have No 'Significant' Environmental Impact https://t.co/eypwXoSNZA @CenterForBioDiv— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1464880187.0
Monday's suit comes after an oil company proposed to conduct California's first offshore frack in almost two years. The oil company, DCOR, LLC, hopes to frack an offshore well in the Santa Barbara Channel. The company would be allowed to discharge chemical-laden fracking flowback fluid into the ocean.
"Kudos to Kamala Harris for fighting to protect our ocean from fracking chemicals," said Kristen Monsell, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. "Offshore fracking raises deep concerns among the millions of people who live, work and play on California's beautiful coast. Whether it's done on land or off our shores, fracking is a toxic threat to our state's air, water and wildlife."
Fearing expanded offshore oil development under the Trump administration, the center and the Wishtoyo Foundation last month filed their own offshore fracking lawsuit against U.S. officials. That suit points to offshore fracking pollution's threats to the ocean, public health, imperiled wildlife and sacred Chumash cultural resources and places.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement decided to allow offshore fracking in federal waters off California in May, after releasing a cursory environmental assessment of the practice.
The federal assessment failed to fully disclose the chemicals used by oil companies and their effects on marine life and water quality, citing information gaps, yet it acknowledged that those chemicals can be hazardous. The assessment admitted that offshore fracking will prolong offshore oil and gas activities, extending the life of aging infrastructure and increasing the risk of yet more devastating oil spills.
Hundreds of Offshore Fracking Wells Dump Billions of Gallons of Oil Waste Into Gulf via @EcoWatch https://t.co/MF0ozAMQDn— Environment America (@Environment America)1468348766.0
Offshore fracking blasts vast volumes of water mixed with toxic chemicals beneath the seafloor at pressures high enough to fracture rocks. The high pressures used in offshore fracking increase the risk of well failure and oil spills.
The California Council on Science and Technology has identified some common fracking chemicals to be among the most toxic in the world to marine animals. Oil companies in the Santa Barbara Channel have federal permission to dump up to 9 billion gallons of produced water—including fracking chemicals—into the ocean every year.
The Obama administration still has time forestall expanded drilling and fracking off the California coast under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which gives the president authority to "withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the Outer Continental Shelf."
California is bracing for rare January wildfires this week amid damaging Santa Ana winds coupled with unusually hot and dry winter weather.
High winds, gusting up to 80- to 90 miles per hour in some parts of the state, are expected to last through Wednesday evening. Nearly the entire state has been in a drought for months, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which, alongside summerlike temperatures, has left vegetation dry and flammable.
Utilities Southern California Edison and PG&E, which serves the central and northern portions of the state, warned it may preemptively shut off power to hundreds of thousands of customers to reduce the risk of electrical fires sparked by trees and branches falling on live power lines. The rare January fire conditions come on the heels of the worst wildfire season ever recorded in California, as climate change exacerbates the factors causing fires to be more frequent and severe.
California is also experiencing the most severe surge of COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, with hospitals and ICUs over capacity and a stay-at-home order in place. Wildfire smoke can increase the risk of adverse health effects due to COVID, and evacuations forcing people to crowd into shelters could further spread the virus.
As reported by AccuWeather:
In the atmosphere, air flows from high to low pressure. The setup into Wednesday is like having two giant atmospheric fans working as a team with one pulling and the other pushing the air in the same direction.
Normally, mountains to the north and east of Los Angeles would protect the downtown which sits in a basin. However, with the assistance of the offshore storm, there will be areas of gusty winds even in the L.A. Basin. The winds may get strong enough in parts of the basin to break tree limbs and lead to sporadic power outages and sparks that could ignite fires.
"Typically, Santa Ana winds stay out of downtown Los Angeles and the L.A. Basin, but this time, conditions may set up just right to bring 30- to 40-mph wind gusts even in those typically calm condition areas," said AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Mike Doll.
For a deeper dive:
AP, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, Weather Channel, AccuWeather, New York Times, Slideshow: New York Times; Climate Signals Background: Wildfires, 2020 Western wildfire season
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