The public has one more week to comment on proposed state rules governing hydraulic fracturing, the controversial oil and gas drilling process known as fracking, but the Center for Biological Diversity isn’t waiting to see the finished product, expected in the fall.

The Arizona–based environmental group filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Alameda County Superior Court alleging that the California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) is not providing legally required oversight of the growing practice that may be about to dramatically expand. The division is in the Department of Conservation (DOC).

Fracking injects millions of gallons of pressurized water, chemicals (some toxic), sand and other substances into wells to crack open the rocks and allow easier access to oil and natural gas. Critics say it has been linked to groundwater contamination, air pollution, releases of methane gas, micro-earthquakes and sink holes.

Fracking is virtually unregulated in California although it has been around for decades. The center estimates that more than 600 wells were fracked in 2011, but drillers don’t have to disclose where they are fracking and what, precisely, they inject into the ground.

Governor Jerry Brown fired DOC Acting Director Derek Chernow and the head of DOGGR in December 2011 after the energy industry complained that the state was slowing the permit process by requiring environmental tests and procedures they didn’t like.  

A looming fracking boom that could exploit the state’s enormous shale deposits, and reports nationwide of ill effects traced to the process have spurred demands for aggressive state oversight. The state responded with draft regulations that have been ridiculed by environmentalists for its limited pre-drilling notification rules, lack of meaningful appeals process, flawed transparency, and loopholes that preserve drillers’ rights to obscure what materials they inject in the ground and eject into the atmosphere.

Kassy Siegel, director of the center’s Climate Law Institute, said the proposal was “worse than nothing,” while oil industry spokesman Tupper Hull expressed satisfaction with the state’s regulatory effort.

The suit alleges that California law requires the state to regulate all forms of underground ejection and should apply to fracking. The federal government exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act of 2005 in what is commonly called the “Halliburton Loophole,” but no such exemption exists in state law.    

“Existing rules clearly cover fracking, but state officials don’t regulate or even track this dangerous way of extracting oil and gas,” center attorney Vera Pardee said. “The state needs to stop ignoring the law and start protecting our environment.”

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:

California Sued for Allegedly Failing to Regulate Fracking (by Karen Gullo, Bloomberg)

Lawsuit Filed to Stop Unregulated Fracking in California (Center for Biological Diversity)

CA Sued over Environmental Toll of Fracking (by David R. Baker, San Francisco Chronicle)

Studies Find California “Fracking” Wells May Kill Livestock, Family Pets (by Dan Aiello, California Progress Report)

Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Resources: Separating the Frack from the Fiction (by Heather Cooley and Kristina Donnelly, Pacific Institute) (pdf)

“Discussion Draft” of First-Ever Fracking Regulations Raises a Howl from Environmentalists (by Ken Broder, AllGov California)