Ban on fracking in Monterey County moves to November ballot

Over 40 members of Protect Monterey County gathered Wednesday morning at the trail-head of Fort Ord Monument with one single message, to ban fracking in Monterey County.

“The risk of contaminating our aquifers would be tremendous. As a matter of fact we have evidence that they’ve contaminated our aquifers already,” said Demetrio Prunedo, a member of the non-profit.

The group had 7 weeks to gather roughly 8,000 signatures to get their proposal on the November ballot. They showed up with 16,108, sending the battle over oil production in Monterey County to the voters.

Monterey County is the 4th largest oil producing county in the state. No fracking is actually taking place in the county, but the group wants to stop it before it starts and limit other techniques that are being used.

“But they can make it much safer, and our initiative provides for that. It basically says you’ll do no more waste water injection wells in this county, and you have about 5 years to phase out the waste water that you’re doing,” said Andy Hsia-Coran with Protect Monterey County.

According to Californians for Energy Independence, oil production in Monterey County supports nearly 2,000 jobs and creates almost 150 million dollars in tax revenue. They released a statement today calling this fracking ban a deceitful ploy.

It reads:

The implication of today’s actions are simple: bring an end to 60 years of safe oil production in Monterey County, endanger thousands of local jobs and dry up millions of dollars in local tax revenue that pays for schools and public safety.

But those with Protect Monterey County think otherwise, as they continue this expensive battle

“And it’s our money, we’ve paid them, every time we fill our cars. So they’ve got this immense amount of money and they continue to spend it to basically damage the future for our children,” said Hsia-Coran.

Looking ahead to the November election, this will likely to be a hard-fought and very expensive campaign.