After supes nix a moratorium, local activists prep a 2016 ballot initiative to ban fracking.

On April 30, 2014, the county Planning Commission voted 7-0 to recommend the county Board of Supervisors issue a two-year moratorium on fracking. That recommendation finally went before the supervisors last March 19, and they voted 3-2 to take a pass.

“I’m not convinced today that we need to do anything,” said Supervisor Fernando Armenta. “I see no immediate threat.”

Supervisor Dave Potter was in the minority, and said he was motivated partly by the best interests of the oil and gas industry: A short-term moratorium, he reasoned, would be better in the long run than a citizen effort to block fracking. “If I was in the industry, I would be extremely concerned about the cost, the divisiveness, the bad press that a referendum would bring about,” he said.

Potter’s words have proved prophetic. Since March, a group of activists have been quietly meeting in Salinas to lay the groundwork for a 2016 ballot initiative to ban fracking, as well as other practices they call “extreme oil extraction techniques” in Monterey County.

“This was really the only option left,” says Paula Getzelman, a Lockwood resident and founding member of Protect Monterey County, the new grassroots group working on the initiative. “We would like protections for agriculture, tourism, and the health and well-being of our residents. If we weren’t able to get those from state regulatory agencies and our Board of Supervisors, we felt the people deserve to have the opportunity to deal with it at the voter level.”

The group has met with San Benito County activists who crafted Measure J, a fracking ban that passed last year despite industry opposition. The language of the initiative is yet to be written, but opponents are already lining up.

One possible opponent: the Monterey County Hospitality Association, which includes some 250 members, including hotels and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Sam Teel, co-chair of the governance committee, spoke against a moratorium at the March 19 supervisors meeting, and says the association will likely oppose a ban. “Hospitality is very dependent on oil,” Teel says. “There’s no way around it.”

Chevron spokesperson Robin Fleming points to SB 4, the state’s enhanced regulations for fracking, which she says protects water, land and people: “A ballot initiative is a waste of taxpayers’ money for something that is not needed.”

But to Getzelman, the regulations aren’t enough. She and her husband grow wine grapes, and she wants to protect their fragile water supply. “The more I learned, the more I became concerned,” she says. “Regulations don’t work.”