Judge slams Obama Administration, blocks fracking in California

For not wt least, there won’t be any fracking water in your food.

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the U.S. Bureau of Land Management from opening more than 1 million acres in Central California to oil drilling because the agency did not properly explore the potential dangers of fracking.

U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald sided with environmentalists who argued that the bureau should have addressed the possible impacts of hydraulic fracturing in an environmental impact statement issued as part of the formal process of opening public lands to drilling.

Instead, the 1,073-page impact statement mentioned fracking only three times and never discussed the controversial practice in depth, according to the judge.

He ordered the bureau to prepare a supplemental impact statement that includes fracking before the bureau moves forward on oil and gas development in the area, which includes federal properties in Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Ventura counties.

Environmentalists who consider fracking a threat to California’s strained groundwater supplies hailed the ruling.

“To be clear, the act of commissioning the CCST Report itself does not satisfy the Bureau’s obligations to take a ‘hard look’ at the potentially adverse effects of fracking,” Fitzgerald wrote.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

How @AmChemistry keeps killing California farm communities

A pollutant that has leached into California aquifers since farmers first began using synthetic fertilizer continues to accumulate and would not be removed from groundwater even if the state’s agriculture businesses abruptly quit using nitrogen-based materials to boost the productivity of their crops.

That’s one of the themes of a new study from the UC Davis Agriculture Sustainability Institute that assesses the scale and sources of a kind of pollution that can harm infants if it seeps into groundwater and contributes to respiratory problems if it drifts into the air as a gas.

The report is the widest look yet at pollution from nitrogen, a common contaminant that the State Water Quality Control Board has tried in fits and starts to remove from Central Valley agricultural communities over the past decade.

Look no further than shameless Cal Dooley and the American Chemistry Council if you want to know why things like this keep happening in California.

The report took seven years to weave together a broad picture of nitrogen pollution up and down the state. Past efforts have focused on specific regions, such as a 2012 study that showed up to 250,000 people are highly vulnerable to nitrogen contamination in the Salinas and southern San Joaquin valleys.

Nice…real nice. Thanks Cal!

The study found that California generates about 1.8 million tons of nitrogen every year. More than half of it comes from agricultural sources, which rely on nitrogen as a key component in fertilizers.

Of that, about 419,000 tons leach into groundwater, where it becomes a salt known as nitrate. Overexposure to nitrates in drinking water can hurt an infant’s ability to move oxygen in the bloodstream. It’s a condition known as “blue baby syndrome.”

Source: The Sacramento Bee

Like it or not, the @CaGOP gets to ride @realDonaldTrump’s coattails

To the likely dismay of California Republican leaders, Donald Trump is going to be the most visible GOP candidate in the state’s congressional races.

While the June 7 primary is more of a test match than a game changer for most of the state’s House candidates, Democrats already are working overtime to tie Republicans to Trump, the likely presidential nominee who polls show is profoundly unpopular with California Latinos, women and young people.

Republican incumbents like David Valadao of Hanford (Kings County), Jeff Denham of Turlock (Stanislaus County) and Steve Knight of Lancaster (Los Angeles County) can expect to be tarred with every controversial statement uttered by Trump, who revels in his controversial, shoot-from-the-hip campaign style.

“Denham, Valadao and Knight are on the Trump ticket whether they like it or not,” said Barb Solish, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Source: The San Francisco Chronicle