Feds auction prime Calif. land for oil development

[Xithras]

4. I'll be there with you

The Valley has enough problems, and the pumpjack blight around Bakersfield is pretty bad as it is. I have no intention of letting that spread north without resisting with everything I have.

The California Central Valley sits on a basin fill aquifier with only a tiny outlet at the Delta. It's a massive bowl with only one pinhole leak. Fracking pollution won't flow away, but will sit there, in our aquifier, spreading slowly north for CENTURIES (we still have groundwater pollution issues from mining activities in the 1800's!). The Valley has one big aquifier stretching from Redding to Bakersfield, so a fracking threat in one part of the valley is a threat to all of us. More than 6 million people depend on that aquifier for all or part of their water supply.

Oil drilling also generates a lot of air pollution, and our air is so bad that the Valley Air District has already been considering petitions to completely ban fireplace use on all but a handful of days. I'll be damned if I'm going to let them take my fireplace away just so the oil companies can dump more NOx, hydrocarbons, and VOC's into our air. No air quality exemptions for oil companies!