This scene would look better with some fracking waste in it, right?
California is dealing with serious water
pollution issues. It's not a surprise if you've been
following the reports coming out of California for the past few years. The people being charged with protecting Californian drinking water have been doing a terrible job.
So yesterday:
During a testy two-hour oversight hearing, officials from the California Department of Conservation, the department's Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources and the state Water Resources Control Board promised senators a top-down overhaul of their regulation of the disposal of oil field wastewater.
Of course, many of the Democratic senators on the oversight committee found these agencies' promises pretty dubious.
Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) called the division's failings "endemic" and said that just reading background materials to prepare for Tuesday's hearing caused her blood pressure to soar.
It's hard regulating the fuel industry when it's one of the most
lucrative industries in your state. But, your job isn't to make money, it's to make the water safe for human adults and children to drink and play about in.
What say you, state oil and gas supervisor Steven Bohlen?
In another exchange, state oil and gas supervisor Steven Bohlen was asked whether cyclic steam injection practices — in which steam is injected underground with such pressure that rock formations are crumbling and potentially creating dangerous sinkholes — are violating federal and state regulations.
Bohlen said that he thought so but that he hadn't had time to "brush up on regulations."
I don't know what Bohlen looks like but he might as well look like every other guy running a corporation or a bank or a car company who doesn't seem to know
much of anything about what he's supposed to know
everything about.
Here's how well you've regulated the oil industry:
So far, the state has shut down 23 of the hundreds of injection wells that are in aquifers not approved for waste injection.
Agency officials have attributed the errors to haphazard record-keeping and antiquated data collection. And they have said that initial tests on nine drinking water supply wells found no benzene or other contaminants.
Blood boiling.