- Target:
- California Democratic Party
- Region:
- United States of America
Hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as “fracking”, is a technique to extract gas or oil by drilling vertically and often horizontally deep under the earth’s surface.
Fracking injects a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the wells at high pressure. Fracking uses large amounts of chemicals that contaminate the water supply and can cause cancer, creates wastewater that brings deep-earth contaminants to the surface, releases methane gas into the air that exacerbates climate change and pollutes the air with asthma-causing smog and may cause earthquakes.
Fracking is currently exempt from federal regulation under an exception in The Safe Drinking Water Act and is not regulated and, as a result, the chemicals used are treated as secret corporate property and are not tested and the locations of all the wells are not made public.
We, the undersigned, urge the California Democratic Party to pass the following resolution demanding a moratorium on fracking at the California Democratic Party Convention held at the Sacramento Convention Center April 12-14, 2013.
MORATORIUM ON HYDRAULIC FRACTURING (FRACKING)
WHEREAS, hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as “fracking”, is a technique that drills vertically and often horizontally deep under the earth’s surface and injects a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the wells at high pressure to crack shale and dense rock formations to extract gas or oil; and
WHEREAS, fracking uses large amounts of water reducing its availability for agriculture and other public use, uses large amounts of chemicals that contaminate the water supply and can cause cancer, creates wastewater that brings deep-earth contaminants to the surface, releases methane gas into the air that exacerbates climate change and pollutes the air with asthma-causing smog and may cause earthquakes; and
WHEREAS, fracking is currently exempt from federal regulation under an exception in The Safe Drinking Water Act and is not regulated by California and, as a result, the chemicals used are treated as secret corporate property and are not tested and the locations of all the wells are not tested or made public; and
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party supports: 1) an immediate moratorium on fracking with such moratorium to remain in effect until legislation and regulations are put in place that repeal the exception in The Safe Drinking Water Act, guarantee the public health and safety, mitigate the effects on climate change, protect the environment and allow government access and testing of the chemicals used; 2) full disclosure and testing of all sites; and 3) substitution of renewable energy as soon as practical; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party send a copy of this resolution to President Obama, Governor Brown, Senator Feinstein, Senator Boxer, the California Democratic Congressional Delegation and the Democratic Members of the California State Legislature and call on them to take all executive, administrative, regulatory and legislative actions to implement this resolution.
Authors: Michael Goldman, RL Miller, Susie Shannon
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The MORATORIUM ON HYDRAULIC FRACTURING (FRACKING) petition to California Democratic Party was written by Susie Shannon and is in the category Environment at GoPetition.