08 February 2013
Oil and Water Do Mix!
We need to group water and oil together in developing the energy and environmental policies for California and for the nation.
To date, opposition to fracking in various communities focuses on the potential for polluting the underground water supplies, in addition to our rivers and lake resources, from which we obtain potable water for drinking and cooking. In the current newsletter ProPublica, Abraham Lustgarten reports that Mexico City is planning to access drinking water from an aquifer that is being polluted by US drilling companies. See http://www.propublica.org/series/injection-wells for extensive reporting on this subject. Lustgarten points out that the dumping of toxic liquids into very deep wells was intended to go deeper than any water resources we would ever use. Our state and federal regulators have not been inspecting these wells for several years, which I attribute to industry and Congressional resistance to funding sufficient inspectors and auditors within the environmental protection agencies.
While the fracking process has raised local concerns about polluting local water supplies, no one seems to focus on the importance of water to the petroleum industry. When policy discussions about our energy needs fill the halls of state and federal governments each party emphasizes the petroleum part of the oil production process.
Consider how much the current, extensive drought is affecting our nation's agriculture. Even the oil industry has been asked by the federal government to use less corn in refining gasoline products. Demands on corn production by the oil industry cause price increases in food products that use corn syrup, corn flour, plus feed for animals upon which we depend for our meat and dairy supplies. In a large part of the central US, the current drought is forcing farmers to selling off their animal stock because they cannot afford to feed them and grazing animals cannot find sufficient nutrients in their dry pastures.
California has to address these issues of oil production and refining, water for agriculture and for its 36 million residents' drinking and residential use. In the mid-1970's, the City Manager of Torrance, California, said that the three refineries within city limits consumed one-third of Torrance's water supplies each year. Water rights political battles between northern and southern parts of the state have existed as long as the state has developed. The agricultural interests in the central San Joaquin Valley, King County and the Salinas Valley that generate such a large part of our nation's food supply need water for crops. The state's population and industrial growth, especially in Southern California, adds to already stretched demands on the state's water resources. Without better, coordinated regulation mitigating market pricing and supply, the oil companies will to consume more water for drilling and refining, farmers will pay more for their water and crop prices will rise making commercial feed and consumer agricultural products more expensive across the nation.
Water wars have been part of California's history forever, affecting population settlement and relocation since before the Spanish arrived. Unlike other, primarily desert or water-scarce regions of the world, the only government capital initiatives in California, Nevada and Arizona involved water distribution and natural resource exploitation without any resources devoted to water resource creation from the Pacific Ocean. Only recently has the City of San Diego begun a desalinization development to produce potable water from sea water, but much more will be needed throughout the region.
Three groups of vested commercial interests: 1) the oil industry, 2) the agriculture industry, and 3) the commercial and residential developers will vie for tying up water rights throughout California.
If the oil industry extraction and refining practices pollute the aquifer, it ill cause devastating effects on drinking water and other residential water uses, on agriculture's dependence on water for growing its three crops per year, and on developers' ability to build new residences and commercial buildings necessary for job growth and retention of the labor force.
Old adages die hard, but saying that water and oil do not mix masks an imminent threat of smoke stack policy dynamics within our state and federal government policy offices. Without using a comprehensive model of our water, petroleum and natural gas resources from discovery to waste, we will fail to provide the infrastructure and output needed for our anticipated standards of living beyond the next generation coming of age in 2050,
To date, opposition to fracking in various communities focuses on the potential for polluting the underground water supplies, in addition to our rivers and lake resources, from which we obtain potable water for drinking and cooking. In the current newsletter ProPublica, Abraham Lustgarten reports that Mexico City is planning to access drinking water from an aquifer that is being polluted by US drilling companies. See http://www.propublica.org/series/injection-wells for extensive reporting on this subject. Lustgarten points out that the dumping of toxic liquids into very deep wells was intended to go deeper than any water resources we would ever use. Our state and federal regulators have not been inspecting these wells for several years, which I attribute to industry and Congressional resistance to funding sufficient inspectors and auditors within the environmental protection agencies.
While the fracking process has raised local concerns about polluting local water supplies, no one seems to focus on the importance of water to the petroleum industry. When policy discussions about our energy needs fill the halls of state and federal governments each party emphasizes the petroleum part of the oil production process.
Consider how much the current, extensive drought is affecting our nation's agriculture. Even the oil industry has been asked by the federal government to use less corn in refining gasoline products. Demands on corn production by the oil industry cause price increases in food products that use corn syrup, corn flour, plus feed for animals upon which we depend for our meat and dairy supplies. In a large part of the central US, the current drought is forcing farmers to selling off their animal stock because they cannot afford to feed them and grazing animals cannot find sufficient nutrients in their dry pastures.
California has to address these issues of oil production and refining, water for agriculture and for its 36 million residents' drinking and residential use. In the mid-1970's, the City Manager of Torrance, California, said that the three refineries within city limits consumed one-third of Torrance's water supplies each year. Water rights political battles between northern and southern parts of the state have existed as long as the state has developed. The agricultural interests in the central San Joaquin Valley, King County and the Salinas Valley that generate such a large part of our nation's food supply need water for crops. The state's population and industrial growth, especially in Southern California, adds to already stretched demands on the state's water resources. Without better, coordinated regulation mitigating market pricing and supply, the oil companies will to consume more water for drilling and refining, farmers will pay more for their water and crop prices will rise making commercial feed and consumer agricultural products more expensive across the nation.
Water wars have been part of California's history forever, affecting population settlement and relocation since before the Spanish arrived. Unlike other, primarily desert or water-scarce regions of the world, the only government capital initiatives in California, Nevada and Arizona involved water distribution and natural resource exploitation without any resources devoted to water resource creation from the Pacific Ocean. Only recently has the City of San Diego begun a desalinization development to produce potable water from sea water, but much more will be needed throughout the region.
Three groups of vested commercial interests: 1) the oil industry, 2) the agriculture industry, and 3) the commercial and residential developers will vie for tying up water rights throughout California.
If the oil industry extraction and refining practices pollute the aquifer, it ill cause devastating effects on drinking water and other residential water uses, on agriculture's dependence on water for growing its three crops per year, and on developers' ability to build new residences and commercial buildings necessary for job growth and retention of the labor force.
Old adages die hard, but saying that water and oil do not mix masks an imminent threat of smoke stack policy dynamics within our state and federal government policy offices. Without using a comprehensive model of our water, petroleum and natural gas resources from discovery to waste, we will fail to provide the infrastructure and output needed for our anticipated standards of living beyond the next generation coming of age in 2050,
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