Feds’ fracking plan provokes state lawsuit
The state of California sued the Trump administration Friday for approving new oildrilling leases on federal land in eight Central California counties and the Sierra foothills. It’s the latest step in an ongoing dispute between the federal government and the nation’s most populous state.
State Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Pasadena, accusing the Bureau of Land Management of illegally failing to consider public health concerns, groundwater contamination, increases in greenhouse gas emissions and the potential for earthquakes from the drilling method known as fracking.
It claims Trump administration officials also
failed to fully evaluate the environmental impacts of the plan on nearby communities.
“BLM’s decision to advance this halfbaked proposal isn’t just misguided, it’s downright dangerous,” Becerra said in a statement. “The risks to both people and the environment associated with fracking are simply too high to ignore.
“But that’s essentially what BLM is doing,” he said. “We won’t ignore the facts and science when it comes to protecting our people, economy, and environment — and we’re taking the Trump Administration to court to prove it.”
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Gov. Gavin Newsom, the California Air Resources Board, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the state Department of Water Resources.
The Trump administration gave the goahead in December for new oil and gas leases across more than 1 million acres between Bakersfield and Santa Barbara, the first ones made available by the Bureau of Land Management in the region in five years.
It means hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, will be allowed in Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Ventura counties. Smaller plots will also be open outside of existing industry sites, including at the edge of Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks in the Sierra, the Carrizo Plain National Monument in San Luis Obispo County and within 10 miles of Yosemite National Park.
Fracking is when highpressure water, sand and chemicals are used to extract oil and gas. The technique makes it easier to tap hardtoreach mineral deposits but is known to pollute groundwater and even trigger earthquakes.
The Bureau of Land Management has insisted that the agency would require petroleum companies to develop plans showing that their ventures are economically viable and would not damage the environment before they would be allowed to go forward.
Serena Baker, the spokeswoman for the BLM’s Central California district office, said Friday that the agency’s environmental review used the best available information and only covered leases where there had been previous oil exploration.
She said the agency manages less than 10% of oil and gas operations in California, while the state is responsible for fracking permits, including on BLMmanaged land.
But the plaintiffs claim seven of the eight counties — including Kern County, where 95% of the drilling has traditionally occurred — already do not meet airquality standards for particulate matter, ozone or both.
The suit urges the court to set aside the drilling plan because the government’s environmental review failed to consider “a growing body of evidence” that fracking can pollute groundwater, release toxins into the air, cause land to sink and trigger lowlevel seismic events.
The Trump plan also ignores the danger to millions of people and imperils species living near the oil and gas wells, increasing the risk of asthma, heart disease, lung disease and cancer in vulnerable, mostly lowincome communities, according to the lawsuit. All of this, and BLM’s failure to consider alternatives, mitigations or conflicts with state law, violate the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, Becerra said.
The environmental “analysis did not make any new public lands or federal minerals available to oil and gas development, since the available lands have been open to oil and gas development for more than 30 years,” Baker countered. “It also did not issue any new leases or approve any permits to drill.”
The state’s action comes a few days after six environmental groups, led by the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, sued the federal government over the same leases.
“It’s encouraging to see Gov. Newsom and other state officials join the battle against the Trump administration’s scheme to unleash a frenzy of fracking and drilling on our beautiful public lands,” said Clare Lakewood, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Californians won’t allow the oil industry to pollute our air and water and cripple our efforts to fight climate change.”
The drilling leases are part of a push by the administration to increase fossil fuel development in California. It is an agenda that has infuriated conservationists, California legislators and the governor, who have committed to dramatic reduction targets on greenhouse gas emissions, including zerocarbon power generation by 2045.
The state has all but declared an environmental war against the president. Newsom recently halted the approval of hundreds of fracking permits until their ecological impact could be further studied. Conservation groups have also filed a lawsuit challenging Trump administration plans to allow fracking on an additional 725,500 acres across 11 counties in California’s Central Coast and the Bay Area.