Fracking
What is Fracking?
Fracking (or hydraulic fracturing) is a process of drilling for oil and natural gas from shale rock underneath the earth's surface. A high-pressure mixture of toxic chemicals, water, and sand is injected deep underground.
Communities worldwide are concerned about the effects of fracking on their health, land, and water. While it is happening in 34 states across the country (where in some communities residents can actually light their tap water on fire), it is currently unregulated in California, with no warning to communities.
There is no safe fracking:
There are 830,000 oil and gas wells across the US, 90% of which are being fracked. Up to 8 million gallons of water and 40,000 gallons of chemicals (as many as 300 combilned chemicals) are used each time a well is fracked. Individual wells can be fracked as many as 10 times.
When the concrete barriers crack, methane gas and toxic chemicals leach into groundwater. Methane concentrations are 17x higher in drinking-water wells near fracturing sites. Only 30-50% of the toxic fluid is recovered, the rest is simply left underground. Fracking is now also believed to cause earthquakes.
- Watch a video we created about fracking and community rights
- Hear Shannon Biggs speak at the Global Frackdown
Our work: assisting communities to assert their right to say "NO"
The Community Rights Program is working with communities throughout California (such as San Luis Obispo and Culver City) to pass rights-based ordinances that BAN fracking at the local level and elevate citizens' rights to decide if they want fracking in their community, not corporations or the state.
Fracking is an issue of community rights - not regulations. Under our current structure of law, communities are not allowed to decide whether or not fracking is right for them. We are working to change that by writing new laws that assert community rights and subordinate drilling companies (and state agencies) to local, democratic rule.
The path for these cutting-edge laws has already been paved by dozens of other US communities, including the city of Pittsburgh, PA, who worked with The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to pass a rights-based law banning fracking in November 2010.