500 signatures reached
To: To the Supervisors of Santa Barbara County:
Stop Dirty Energy Development in Santa Barbara!
We call on the Santa Barbara County Supervisors to reject the Santa Maria Energy Project. This 136-well oil drilling expansion would use immense amounts of scarce water, pollute the air, contaminate local water supplies, and increase the county's greenhouse gas emissions enormously. If we are to head off the worst effects of climate change, California must lead the way in transitioning to renewable energy. We need to leave the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive oil in the ground, and Santa Maria residents must be protected.
Why is this important?
The fossil fuel industry has recently targeted California's Monterey Shale and other heavy oil reserves as their latest get-rich-quick scheme. They've calculated that there are 15.4 billion barrels of dirty oil underneath our feet -- about as much as would flow through the Keystone XL Pipeline over 40 years if it were approved.
The industry plans on using "enhanced techniques" to get at this oil, such as fracking, cyclic steam injection, and acidization. Each of these techniques is dangerous and unnecessary.
This expansion project alone would generate 88,000 tons of global warming pollution per year, or the equivalent of an additional 17,000 cars on Santa Barbara County roads. And that's just to get the oil out of the ground! Nobody has calculated the emissions from transporting, refining and burning this dirty oil.
The Santa Maria expansion project would inject 300,000 gallons of water per day to heat up the oily sludge underground. That's water our farmers would otherwise use for irrigation.
Santa Barbara county has a choice: do we prioritize renewable energy and scarce natural resources, or do we keep investing in dirty, dangerous fossil fuels?
How it will be delivered
The petition will be delivered to the Santa Barbara County Supervisors at the November 12 hearing for this project.