California is currently suffering from the worst drought in recorded history; this does not seem to phase big oil companies as they design a plan to infuse millions of gallons of freshwater with toxic chemicals and inject it into the Earth in order to free oil.
Fracking is a hot mess of issues; it uses water we don’t have to release chemicals we don’t want and spills out toxic carcinogens we try to avoid at all costs.
My concern is not only of the environment's health, but also of the health of Americans. Therefore, I am asking Governor Brown to ban Fracking in our state. California’s drought has gotten to the point where it has reached a state of emergency; state officials are asked to take any actions necessary to conserve water. In 2014, California had its driest year on record.Even though we are making progress, oil companies seem to drag us back into our drought problem. Fracking companies took an average of 87% of the water used by a family of four last year.
Many local governments have been alerted to the use of fracking and wish to restrict its usage since our drought has been updated to its emergency state and in light of recent earthquakes happening across California. These local governments have concerns about fracking’s environmental impact and excessive water usage.
There are about 500,000 active gas wells here in America. Since it takes about 8 million gallons of water each time one of these companies frack, and 18 times a well can be fracked, the estimated total of 72 trillion gallons of water and about 360 billion gallons of chemicals are needed to run our active gas wells. This insane amount of fracking fluid leached from the system and contaminate our ground water and creates health risks for those near fracking sites. The rest of the fluid is left in open-air pits to evaporate, which causes toxic air pollution, acid rain, and, of course, contributes to our ozone pollution.
Hydraulic Fracturing's cons outweigh the pros. This is why I ask for your help not only for the good of our health, but for the good of the environment.
