Massive amounts of water are used and polluted for fracking
An estimated 70 million gallons of water was used in California to frack for oil and gas in 2014, with an additional 2 million gallons per day for regular production. And those are extremely conservative estimates.
Unlike most water used in households, water used in fracking is contaminated and unfit for use in many other applications. Zack Malitz of Credo: “Governor Brown is forcing ordinary Californians to shoulder the burden of the drought by cutting their personal water use while giving the oil industry a continuing license to break the law and poison our water… Fracking and toxic injection wells may not be the largest uses of water in California, but they are undoubtedly some of the stupidest.”
It takes roughly 87% of the water consumed in a year by a family of four to frack just a single oil well.
Farmers say they’re being forced to use fracking wastewater to irrigate crops
Farmers are relying on fracking wastewater to run their farms, because the drought has left their usual sources of water dry, and conservation laws are in effect.
California allows fracking companies to inject wastewater into federally protected aquifers
The fracking industry has been dumping wastewater into high-quality drinking water reserves “since the late 1970s”. This has led to shutting down many of these wells… but how were they approved int he first place? Political and corporate corruption are powerful forces, particularly when it comes to Big Oil in California, where they have been fracking for decades and are well-entrenched. Regulators recently gave frackers 2 more years to operate these injection wells in protected aquifers in the midst of President Obama’s fairly toothless new federal fracking regulations.
Fracking companies are suing California municipalities to overturn fracking bans
The oil industry recently dropped a lawsuit that sought to overturn San Benito county’s recently enacted fracking ban. The lawsuits are a tactic used by Big Oil to quash opposition to its takeover of prime fracking land, and rely on a questionable legal argument that essentially says because fracking is legal in the state, that law preempts whatever the voters and officials of the county or town decide. In Denton, TX, where fracking was similarly banned, state politicians who are heavily lobbied by the energy industry were busy passing legislation seeking to prevent local municipalities from making up their own minds on fracking.