Group items tagged

The Butte Environmental Council has submitted comments on the California Department of Conservation’s proposed regulations for statewide hydraulic fracturing. BEC’s letter cites 10 points of concern with the presented regulations.More commonly referred to as “fracking,” hydraulic fracturing is an oil recovery process in which large amounts of water treated with chemicals are blasted deep into the ground, shattering shale rock and releasing oil and gas trapped underneath.

Fracking, used for decades around the country, has come under scrutiny from numerous environmental groups, including BEC, concerned with water supply and contamination.

BEC Executive Director Robyn DiFalco urges the public to get informed about fracking.“Many people don’t realize that fracking is taking place across California and even as close to home as the Sutter Buttes and Glenn County,” she said. “Those fracking wells are tapping oil below the Tuscan Aquifer, which could contaminate our primary source of drinking water.” 

In January, dogged tree activist Charles Withuhn continued his effort to replenish the urban forest by offering free trees to the public through his organization, Chico Tree Advocates. “What makes me grateful to live here is not the bushes. It’s these towering giants that have been here since Annie Bidwell, and they’re not being replaced,” he told CN&R.

On March 1, Natalie Carter stepped down from her post as general manager at the Chico Certified Farmers’ Market to take the reins as executive director of Butte Environmental Council.

In the June primary, Butte County voters showed their overwhelming support for banning hydraulic fracturing locally: Measure E, sponsored by local group Frack-Free Butte County, won by 71.5 percent of the vote.

Letter writer Garry Cooper is right. Facts must guide when considering a moratorium on fracking in Butte County. Here are 12: 1. We are now blessed with deep, fresh, clean groundwater aquifers in our valley. 2. Our groundwater is invaluable as drinking water for people and animals and for irrigation water for our food. 3. Butte County has old wells drilled to collect gas, which lies below and separated by protective impervious layers from our groundwater. 4. Fracking wells would drill completely through our groundwater and its protective impervious layers. 5. Fracking injects, under extreme pressures, huge quantities of many highly toxic chemicals down the drill hole and its horizontal extensions, reaching miles out around the well. Fracking also creates vast quantities of toxic waste liquids.

Support the Citizens Action Network's proposed moratorium on fracking in Butte County. — Doug Fogel, Chico

OROVILLE >> No new oil or gas wells have been drilled in Butte County in more than two decades, and nobody has ever sought permission to conduct a "fracking" operation, but if anybody ever does ask it looks like the answer will be "no." Tuesday the Board of Supervisors voted to have county staff prepare an ordinance that bans fracking.

Documents prepared by county staff for Tuesday's meeting described fracking as "a common term for hydraulic fracturing that is a technique of well stimulation used to increase petroleum production,"

At request from the county's Water Commission, the supervisors were asked to adopt and ordinance that would require a conditional use permit before a fracking operation could take place within county jurisdiction. In introducing the proposal, Paul Gosselin, director of the county Department of Water and Resource Conservation, said the procedure "has raised controversy and concern about environmental impacts, water, and seismic activity."

County supervisors move to ban controversial gas extraction method

This article was published on 04.10.14.

The controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing to extract underground oil and gas reserves is well on the way to getting banned in Butte County. On Tuesday (April 8), the Board of Supervisors voted in favor of moving forward on crafting a zoning ordinance, as recommended by the county water commission, that would require a use permit for the practice that is more commonly known as fracking.

County supervisors wise to institute fracking ban I wanted to thank Supervisors Steve Lambert, Doug Teeter, Bill Connelly and Maureen Kirk for their vote in favor of a ban on fracking (hydraulic fracturing) in Butte County. They all demonstrated a willingness to learn about the issue and to consider the impact on our community that a fracking boom could have. Most importantly, they were willing to vote to protect the beauty, bounty and public health of our community.