If an oil rig trashes a forest, and no one is there to hear it, will anyone object?
This must be the question of the moment at the Federal Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) as the agency proposes rules to open millions of acres in California, including protected lands, to oil drilling and fracking. Lands impacted by recent proposed rules include hundreds of acres in the South Bay and even protected areas like Mt. Diablo State Park
The proposed rules are as dense as the phone book. But at least the phone book is user friendly. Reading these recommendations requires patience and detective work. The bottom line is this: these rules if fully implemented will make Texas’ output, with 311,000 oil wells, puny by comparison to the BLM’s dream of Petro-California.
The BLM rules open public lands and mineral estate across California’s Central Valley, Central Coast and the Bay Area to new oil and gas drilling. The Trump administration plan in Northern California is an increase of nearly 327,000 acres from an earlier proposal prepared under the Obama administration. The Northern California public lands earmarked are in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Merced, Monterey, San Benito, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Stanislaus. Central Valley counties impacted include Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare, and Ventura counties.
What else is at stake here? Our connection to each other is tied to our relationship to the land. The East Bay Regional Parks District free publication, “Native Peoples of the East Bay” illuminates the profound intersection between humans and nature which informs East Bay life, including tribal communities. The Ohlone, Bay Miwok and Delta Yokuts peoples knew the natural world as we know our smart phones — with an intimacy that made the land a part of our humanity. And their frame of reference was, and is, one of reverence. Mt. Diablo, a state park where the BLM now seeks to drill, is where the Ohlone believe life began. The proposed rules would also allow drilling on land administered by the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority — a vital sub-region which connects urban San Jose to protected wilderness.
Drilling would not only disrupt sacred sites — it slashes the interconnected nature of our Bay Area ecosystem. According to a 2002 report from the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the bay is the largest estuary along the Pacific shore of North and South America and is a natural resource of incalculable value. Our Bay Area estuary is a confluence where fresh water from rivers and streams meet and mix with salt water from the ocean. Our estuarine habitats are abundant and diverse. San Francisco Bay sustains nearly 500 species of fish, invertebrates, birds, mammals, insects and amphibians. Moreover, two thirds of the state’s salmon pass through the Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, along with nearly half of migrating waterfowl and shorebirds along the Pacific Flyway.
It’s common knowledge that oil drilling is a dirty business — it damages the environment during collection and transport and produces environmental toxins, including carbon dioxide. The EPA reports fracking contaminates drinking water sources with chemicals that lead to cancer, birth defects and liver damage. This method injects a mixture of water and chemicals into rock formations to release oil and gas. It generates wastewater with dangerous chemicals that can leak to ponds, lagoons and underground aquifers. And what’s with the rush to drill, drill, drill in a state where we have to pay other jurisdictions to take our excess solar capacity?
What’s not commonly known is actual impact. Getting this information requires patience and a bit of detective work to locate maps within the BLM proposed rule. Fortunately local biodiversity advocates have published a map that makes it easy to see its footprint. Essentially, it’s a huge smudge covering both sides of the Salinas River, starting south at Avenal and ending outside of Concord.
Access to this data is essential for public understanding and feedback. True, notices are published in the Federal Register and on the website of the BLM. But it shouldn’t take a private detective or a rocket scientist to find and understand rules that, if implemented, will destroy the character of our region. Because if an entire ecosystem fails and no one is there to hear it, we’ll definitely feel it.
Marcela Davison Aviles is a writer/producer and founder of The Chapultepec Group.
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