The Trump administration is starting the process of opening up large swaths of land in California to hydraulic fracturing.
In a notice issued Wednesday to the Federal Register, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said it intends to analyze the impact of hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, on publicly owned land throughout the state.
The area in question spans 400,000 acres of public land and 1.2 million acres of federal mineral estates throughout a number of California counties including Fresno, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara.
The notice of intent says BLM will begin the scoping process for a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, which will determine the effects of fracking on the environment. Fracking is a technology used to release oil and gas from land. The administration’s intent is to eventually open up public land to new lease sales.
The announcement follows a 2017 lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity. That lawsuit challenged a 2015 attempt by the federal government to finalize a resource management plan that acknowledged fracking. In its settlement, BLM promised that it would first provide an environmental impact statement before considering fracking.
The agency’s notice of intent to conduct an environmental impact statement is open for public comment.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on multiple occasions has highlighted an interest in expanding drilling on public land to generate funds from lease sales.
Clare Lakewood, an attorney for the Center of Biological Diversity, said her organization will be waiting to see how the administration justifies fracking in their analysis.
“You can’t justify drilling for fossil fuels anymore, there is no way to come out with an environmental analysis and find out this is OK,” she said.
Lakewood said the timing on the notice of intent was also particularly striking. At the end of July, the administration announced it would be weakening Obama-era standards on vehicle emissions standards, a move that would take away California’s ability to set its own heightened regulations.
“It’s a coordinated attack on California by the Trump administration,” Lakewood said.
Recently, President Trump has criticized the Golden State over environmental standards he has deemed too strict. This week, he sent a series of tweets blaming the state’s policies on water and logging for the number of wildfires raging within its borders.
The Interior Department did not respond to a request for comment.
It won’t matter much, after they finish burning people out, “sanctuary-ing” and otherwise geoengineering Commifornia into the State of Inhabitability.
After understanding how Henry sees these thefts of the peoples’ resources, it’s hard to watch America get sold by the pound to private interests. This is OUR resource. The government should be OUR representative to bring these projects to reality. OUR people should be the contractors- geologists,drillers, transport, refine, sell. The profit should go into OUR account as if we’re all profit sharing.
Instead, either decietful enviro groups will restrict development, keeping BLM and other “parks” and “monuments” as collateral to OUR creditors, or the profits go to private, probably foriegn concerns.
The foriegn agent politicians will laud the new jobs and tax collected by such a project. And the dummies will be happy.
Gaddafi was helping his own, and Africa, by sharing resource revenue from oil with his people. He even gave $50M to Sarkozy, $50M to Obomba, even $10M to O’s degenerate uncle- for their political campaigns. They murdered him shortly after. They doing the same to us-just slower.
Levoy finicum, Gaddafi two entirely different worlds, murdered for the same reason, even JFK for christ sakes. Murdered by joo scum who want it all.
In other words, Trump just loves the idea of destroying natural water sources enjoyed by humans as well as catfish, turtles, fish, scuba divers, other animals, and occasional snake, etc. etc. just so psycho oligarchs can do what Nestle does and destroy the water…just like frackers did to one of the few natural springs out here in dry far west Texas, at Balmorhea State Park natural springs swimming pool. Revelation 11:18 comes to mind…
As Henry told us what would happen with the orange head in the WH. “The fire sale of your country.”
This is more of it.
environmental statement? You can bet it will all be a lie, which they are known to do all the time. people do not have to lease their land to them, but they will, because of the money. there is a town in PA that their water is unfit to drink and shower, they have to have water brought in. their land is polluted beyond any hope of recovery and they will never be able to sell their land or house, unfit for human dwelling. at first the fracking company shipped in water, but they haven’t done that in years. this has been going on for 10 years plus. some of the water wells blew up. some of that waste that is highly contaminated is sent to regular dump sites in New York, where there is no control. People have no common sense anymore. New York does not allow fracking, but now they have a new thing, Wind Mills. I have a friend who lives in deposit new york and because their neighbors have signed on to this wind mill project, they want her to give them rights to her land, they will pay her $3,000.00 a year, what a joke, the contract was 24 pages long, and there was so much crap in it. they would make roads through their property etc. etc. etc. They did say NO! they do have other wind mills, and i do know that some of them are sitting idle, because they can’t get the parts. they also want to make these wind mills the largest in the world. also note that the wells do go dry and they are capped, so to speak, but they leak harmful chemicals and they don’t have many people checking on them (if they ever do) when your water is bad what the heck are you going to drink? most of my neighbors just signed a lease for fracking, i am not saying the water will go bad, but why chance it, when they have such a terrible history of polluting everything.
“…1.2 million acres of federal mineral estates throughout a number of California counties…”
Federal mineral estates???
WHAT THE F%&K IS THAT????? 😡