We have some good news for the Lake Hefner frackers!
Last Friday, Mary Fallin signed into law SB 809. The legislation prevents cities, towns, counties and vigilant neighborhood associations from enacting local ordinances against fracking, wastewater disposal, oil drilling, and other drilling operations.
The bill is affectionately titled the "Let's Give More Power And Control To Corporations Act."
Via the AP:
Oklahoma cities and counties would no longer be able to ban hydraulic fracturing — a process commonly called fracking — or other oil and gas operations within their boundaries under a bill signed into law on Friday by Gov. Mary Fallin.
Pushed hard by the oil and gas industry, but fiercely opposed by municipalities and environmental groups, the bill specifically prohibits cities or towns from banning operations such as drilling, fracking, water disposal, recovery operations or pipeline infrastructure. Fracking is the practice of high-pressure injection of water, sand and chemicals underground to free deposits of oil and gas, which has led to a boom in U.S. energy production.
A similar ban was signed into law last week by Texas' Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, as energy producing states push back against efforts by local governments to limit the practices.
Fallin and other Republican supporters say the bill reaffirms the three-member Oklahoma Corporation Commission as the regulator of the oil and gas industry and prevents a patchwork of inconsistent regulations across the state.
"Corporation commissioners are elected by the people of Oklahoma to regulate the oil and gas industry. They are best equipped to make decisions about drilling and its effect on seismic activity, the environment and other sensitive issues," Fallin said in a statement. "The alternative is to pursue a patchwork of regulations that, in some cases, could arbitrarily ban energy exploration and damage the state's largest industry, largest employers and largest taxpayers."
Once again, I don't have a problem with this. We wouldn't let cities and municipalities issue their own laws to regulate things like food, water and public safety. Why would we let them regulate something like fracking?
Plus, who knows what's better for a local community? The people who live in it, or a panel of the three Corporation Commissioners whose campaigns are primarily funded by the Oklahoma energy industry? I vote the panel.
In addition to that, fracking is good for us and keeps our cities safe. As the people who work in the industry have told us, the release of smaller earthquakes may relieve stress within the earth's crust and prevent larger, more powerful quakes that would require assistance from The Rock to clean up.
Fracking may also hold the key to solving our state's childhood obesity epidemic. Via News 9...
Fracking continues to raise eyebrows across the nation when it comes to safety and even earthquakes. Now, it's being tied to low birth weights in babies.
A new study shows that living close to a high number of "fracked" natural gas wells may be linked to an increased risk of having a lower birth weight baby.
In this study, University of Pittsburgh researchers analyzed the birth records of more than 15,000 babies born in three Pennsylvania counties between 2007 and 2010.
What they found is women who lived close to a high number of natural gas fracking sites were 34 percent more likely to have babies who were smaller than normal than mothers who did not live close to a large number of such wells.
Researchers also found the findings to be true even after they accounted for numerous factors that could affect a newborn's weight, including whether a mother smoked, her race, age, education, prenatal care and whether she'd had previous children, as well as the baby's gender.
There's a little disclaimer on the study. Researchers said this does not prove that living close to a high number fracking sites causes lower birth weights, but they feel it does show the need to further investigate.
That's strange. I thought low birth weights were caused by the fluctuating water levels of Lake Arcadia.
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