Californians deeply dislike Donald Trump. And a new poll shows they strongly support state leaders in resisting Trump’s dangerous, offensive policies on immigration, climate change and other issues.
So why is Gov. Jerry Brown actually advancing Trump’s efforts to expand oil drilling in the Golden State?
The governor’s speeches against Trump’s delusional stance on global warming have received international attention. Yet Gov. Brown’s own regulators want to give the Trump administration the last word on a bizarre plan to permanently sacrifice dozens of California aquifers to the petroleum industry.
Indeed, state officials are strongly supporting oil company efforts to exempt these underground water supplies from the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
If these “aquifer exemption” applications are approved by the state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, oil companies could expand drilling and dump contaminated waste fluid into underground water from Alameda County to Bakersfield to Ventura (see our interactive map of exemption proposals).
Trump’s EPA is all too eager to sign off on this groundwater giveaway. In February, less than a month after Trump took office, federal officials abruptly approved three oil industry requests for aquifer exemptions in California’s Kern County.
These are the first approvals the EPA has granted for California’s exemption requests. But they won’t be the last. The state’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources is gearing up to send dozens of additional applications to federal officials.
Trump has been perfectly clear: He will do everything possible to unleash a drilling and fracking frenzy on our communities and wildlife. Trump's EPA will likely review these oil company applications with the care of an angry bull in a china shop.
So why on earth is Gov. Brown putting this ball in Trump's court?
After all, these exemptions play straight into Trump’s plans to fast-track a drilling spree. Indeed, exempting these aquifers could expand production in some of California’s dirtiest, most carbon-intensive oilfields. The San Ardo oilfield in Monterey County, for example, produces oil that’s more damaging to the climate than the notoriously dirty crude from the Alberta tar sands.
Incredibly, state officials are pushing an exemption to expand the San Ardo field even though Monterey County voters banned fracking and new oil and gas and waste disposal wells last November.
But instead of regrouping after Trump’s election, the Brown administration seems more eager than ever to submit these aquifer proposals to the federal government.
State officials have tried to justify supporting these oil industry requests. But a hard look at the applications shows a wide range of problems, from a disturbing reliance on self-reported oil company data to critical information being entirely absent.
Many of these aquifers contain water that’s far less salty than sea water at a time when California increasingly relies on desalination. Certainly it makes no sense to contaminate even potentially usable water sources in our drought-challenged state with toxic oil waste fluid.
These exemptions also threaten nearby water wells and other aquifers because oilfield chemicals can migrate underground. Yet that risk has been largely ignored. In San Luis Obispo County's Price Canyon area, for example, state officials failed to adequately map water wells around an aquifer they want to exempt from protection.
We can’t count on federal officials to catch such dangerous omissions. Trump is appointing oil industry executives and their lackeys to run our regulatory agencies. They will rubber stamp every oil company request that comes across their desks.
That's why state officials must rethink their support for these applications to pollute California’s water. Gov. Brown has vowed to resist the Trump administration's reckless approach to environmental issues. It's time to fulfill that vow.