California oil waste rules challenged as groundwater threat
PAMELA A. MACLEAN
OAKLAND (Bloomberg) -- California’s rules allowing oil extraction waste to be injected into the ground were challenged by environmental groups, saying the practice threatens protected sources of drinking water as the state suffers through a record drought.
State environmental regulators have allowed the oil industry for years to pump wastewater and other fluids from thousands of wells into protected aquifers, according to a complaint filed Thursday in state court, in Oakland.
Rather than stop the practice, the state enacted emergency rules allowing it to continue until 2017, according to a complaint by lawyers at Earthjustice, which represents the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity.
The groups seeks a court order to invalidate the emergency regulations and halt what they call illegal wastewater injections into aquifers.
Oil industry wastewater produced from hydraulic fracturing, known as fracing, and steam-injection oil wells contain potentially cancer-causing benzene, heavy metals and other dangerous chemicals, according to the complaint.
The state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources knowingly violated an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enforce controls under a federal law limiting wastewater injection into aquifers, the groups claimed in the suit.
‘Sham’ Rules
Instead of ordering a halt to the contamination, the state agency issued “sham” emergency rules that would let the practice continue another two years, it’s alleged.
“The true emergency is the ongoing contamination of California’s underground supply of water,” according to the complaint.
A California official said the state and the EPA are testing wells that risk harming sources of drinking and farming water supplies, and 23 have been shut down.
“Testing of water supply wells by the State Water Resources Control Board has revealed no contamination of water used for drinking or agricultural purposes related to underground injection by the oil and gas industry,” the official, Steven Bohlen, head of the Oil and Gas Division, said Thursday in a statement. “We intend to keep it that way.”
He declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The case is Center for Biological Diversity v. California Department of Conservation, RG 15769302, California Superior Court, Alameda County (Oakland).
