HomeMy WebLinkAboutE-mail from W Roughe - Fracking From: Wolfgang Rougle
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2015 7:59 PM
To: Sweeney, Kristin; Jolliffe, Stacey
Subject: Comments for 2/10 BBS meeting (Frocking)
Dear extraordinarily hardworking Butte County staff,
Please forward my comments, below, to the BOSS in advance of the 2/10 meeting. There's also an
attachment. Thanks!
-Wolfgang Rougle
Dear Board of Supervisors,
I am a full-time farmer in Tehama County. Because I rely on groundwater, because we're all
connected here in the North Valley, because I have ties to Butte County and because I'm curious,
I've been following Butte County's fracking saga closely.
I wanted to understand the issue well, so I researched and wrote an article for a local food magazine
describing the impacts on agiriculture fracking might have in Butte County. (The article, "Fracking
and Farming," appeared in the Winter 2,014 issue of Edible Shasta-Butte.) I have attached it.
After weeks of researching, I became convinced that a full ban on fracking was the prudent,
conservative choice to make for Butte County. The gas will still be there later if(when) fracking
evolves into a safer form of extraction. Far from being "emotional," an anti-fracking stance appears
to me rational, timely, and firmly based in the sciences of agronomy and public health. I applaud the
Board for intuiting this early on.
You will probably be urged to delay your decision for yet another interval. Please don't succumb to
this temptation. Delays seem so harmless, so incremental, but it was exactly these delaying tactics
that kept lead paint on the American market for 50,years (after it was banned in the rest of the
world), eventually costing billions in totally avoidable cleanup costs. Similarly, by urging delay and
manufacturing fake uncertainty about lead's toxicity, the gasoline industry
succeeded in reversing the first ban on leaded gasoline. (Yes, leaded gasoline was first banned in
19231 Did you know about this? I didn't until recently!) Even though safe (if slightly less profitable)
alternatives to lead already existed on the day my grandmother was born, the last gallon of leaded
gasoline was not burned until I was ten years old, in 1990. In that time, over 15 million pounds of
lead was sprayed out of American tailpipes. (There's no natural source of elemental lead.) By 2000,
one in twenty-five American children had toxic blood levels of lead -- a national shame my great-
grandparents could have prevented.
Today, we see the same delaying tactics with everything from food additives long banned in every
country except this one, to the reckless, (but still legal!) use of antibiotics in the livestock industry, to
the continued availability of some of the worst pesticides and herbicides. These things are
particularly frustrating to me as a farmer. We who want to live in a cleanish world are always called
"anti-business" (as if dirty drinking water and high health costs were good for business). And I admit
the ag industry has been as awful about this as any other.
In a sense, though, every delay makes a fracking ban seem better and better, as each passing week
brings news from a place where fracking has done harm -- or from a place which has just decided to
ban fracking. Even in the weeks since the last Planning Commission meeting, the governor of New
York banned fracking in his state, outright, permanently-- even though New York has billlions of
dollars' worth of gas reserves, by some estimates. New York's State Health Commissioner, Howard
Zucker, called fracking "reckless" and admitted he would never move his own family to a town where
fracking was occurring, and thus, in his words, "cannot recommend anyone else's family to live in
such a community either." Indeed.
Finally, some words on "Option B." This proposal was apparently hatched as some kind of
compromise, yet it's much less practical than a ban. It's not even clear whether it outlaws fracking or
not: doesn't the release of frack water into a well during stimulation constitute a "disposal" of
wastewater in the first place? In a usual frack, some of the water stays in the well long-term, and
some is coughed back up --so do we expect companies to Shop-Vac 100% of that now-
contaminated water up out of the Butte County well and dump it in Glenn County? Your own County
Counsel has been consistent and explicit about one thing: Regulating fracking in a manner
DIFFERENT from the State of California could be legally problematic, yet BANNING fracking outright
is legal for Butte County to do.
So do the practical, timely, wise and entirely legal thing: Choose Option A, a full ban, and ban
fracking in Butte County.
Thanks for your leadership.
Wolfgang Rougle
Proprietress, Springfed Organic Farm and Nursery
16395 Ridgewood Rd
Cottonwood, CA 96022
1125115
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In a sense,we
farmers stand to gain
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from fracking: we
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own the land drillers
the state's oldest agricultural organization, "Just before our would have to lease„
annual convention this year," McFarland recalls, "we learned so (assuming we also own our mineral rights,which many
that oil companies had been injecting billions of gallons farmers don't)we could get a paycheck just for opening the
of toxic water into Centa:al.Valley aquifers." (He's talking pasture gate.A few local landowners speak against a ban at
about nine Dern C=ounty injection wells,which had indeed each public meeting,arguing it would mean a"taking”of
been operating illegally. 'lire Central Valley Water Board their property rights. (.Maybe so, but at least in forty-three
(C VWP) shut them down in summer 2014. CVWB testing counties in Pennsylvania and New York, property values
of eight nearby water supply wells revealed that half showed decline near fracked gas yells, according to researchers at
unacceptable levels of arsenic and thallium.) "We are calling University of Calgary and Duke University. The researchers
for a total ban at this point,” McFarland said. examined property sales from 1994 to 2012,. finding that
Closer to home, Olivia Grieco,who runs Oroville's homes relying on a water well lost 10% in value once fracking
Berkeley Olive Grove with her husband .Darro,says, "We're occurred within 0.9 mile and 22%when within 0.6 mile.
thinking of the farmers who come after us------that's the reason Their findings were reported by Forbes.com in April, 2014..
we put our land in conservation. It means everything to tts Houses connected to a municipal water supply saw no
to leave top quality land,behind. I don't want to see Butte decline.) "
County fracked; not just for this generation, but for future Farmers understand just how much America depends on
generations," natural gas:we make drugs and herbicides out of it,dry our
Yet other farmers and farm advocates disagree.The crops with it, hear our barns with it,and(in its life as fertiliz=er)
Farm Bureau's Colleen C=ecil called the proposed ban an it accounts for 40%of the nitrogen humans consume. cj
irresponsible approach. "There is no frocking even going on Speaking strictly for myself, I can farm without natural
in Butte County, so why would we want a ban?A ban is a gas longer than I can farm without water. But if ban
pretty big step." She added that new science and research passes, Butte County farmers and eaters carr stop worrying v
constantly drive improvements to gas extraction technology. about fracking polluting their groundwater.And go back to
"I believe there's a lot of misinformation by those who want a worrying about Kern County stealing it.
ban. It's emotional.And if they ban this,what are they going Author Wo 6rga ng ougle farms in C'ottonwoo .
to ban next?
42 IN'BER2014/15 EDIBLE SHASTA-BUTTE cdibleshastabutre.corn