Monterey County Enviros Push to Imitate Tough New San Benito County Oil Ordinance.

About a year ago the ground started shaking in San Benito County, and it wasn’t an earthquake. Thumper trucks were out to do seismic analysis of potential oil reserves.

The prospectors, Watsonville-based Freedom Resources – a quietly held subsidiary of construction giant Granite Rock – have been quiet since, but the neighborhood has not.

Aromas Cares for the Environment (ACE) formed as citizens gathered at the Aromas Grange to educate themselves on what an oil boom could mean for the area. They didn’t like what they saw, and they found an unusual ally in San Benito County Supervisor Anthony Botelho.

“I don’t identify myself as an environmentalist,” Botelho says. But as an apple grower, he bristled at the lack of water-quality data the oil industry produced. He ushered an ordinance through that places tougher restrictions on the oil and gas industry. It was approved 5-0 on June 18.

Now activists south of that county’s border are looking to replicate ACE’s San Benito success.

“We will take [the San Benito ordinance] to the Monterey County Board of Supervisors and try to get them to absorb portions of that into a decent plan,” says Prunedale resident and District 2 county supervisor candidate Ed Mitchell, who plans to launch ACE Monterey.

When he delivers his proposal, Mitchell may meet with resistance. Supervisor Simon Salinas’ district includes the South County tracts at the northern reaches of the Monterey Shale formation that’s attracted attention from oil operators interested in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

“Right now, I’d rather look to Sacramento,” Salinas says. “This is one issue where the state should step to the plate. Some things we can’t be regulating county by county; I’d rather have a uniform system.”

Of 11 fracking-related bills proposed in the Legislature this session, only one remains: SB 4, introduced by Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, which would require companies to disclose where fracking is taking place and what chemicals they inject into the ground.

“San Benito is one of the first counties that’s taken this type of step, and it’s because of inactivity at the state and federal levels,” says Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Damon Nagami, who partnered with ACE. “We think it’s very important for counties to step in and act on their own.”

San Benito County’s ordinance creates a discretionary water monitoring program, including the appointment of a county petroleum administrator who can require operators to test water before and after drilling wells.

The new ordinance also increases the well fees to help fund cleanup efforts, introduces an insurance requirement, and expands the minimum buffer zone from well sites to roads or houses.

Over the six months San Benito County spent revising its ordinance, oil operators met with Botelho to say the county was imposing a duplicative, costly process.

“It is a shame that most of the proposed regulations in the petroleum ordinance are a result of the perception that the oil and gas exploration and production industry is a despoiler and cannot be trusted,” Termo Company Manager Ralph Combs wrote in a letter to San Benito county counsel.

To Mitchell, Monterey County’s status quo – a checklist asking operators if they plan to frack – doesn’t do enough to protect the public.

“I commend them for coming up with the questions,” he says. “If you can’t enforce with it, then it’s a sham.”