{"id":8232,"date":"2015-05-18T10:03:13","date_gmt":"2015-05-18T15:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8232"},"modified":"2015-05-18T10:03:13","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T15:03:13","slug":"environmentalists-are-taking-california-to-court-over-illegal-oil-industry-wastewater-injection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8232","title":{"rendered":"Environmentalists Are Taking California To Court Over Illegal Oil Industry Wastewater Injection"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 id=\"page-title\" class=\"page__title title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2015\/05\/14\/environmentalists-are-taking-california-court-over-illegal-oil-industry-wastewater-injection\" target=\"_blank\">Environmentalists Are Taking California To Court Over Illegal Oil Industry Wastewater Injection<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Environmentalists filed a motion requesting a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/earthjustice.org\/news\/press\/2015\/preliminary-injunction-aims-to-end-unlawful-contamination-of-california-s-protected-water-sources-from-oil\" target=\"_blank\">preliminary injunction<\/a>\u00a0today in a California court to immediately stop the daily illegal injection of millions of gallons of oil field wastewater into protected groundwater aquifers in the state.<\/p>\n<p>Last week,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/earthjustice.org\/news\/press\/2015\/lawsuit-seeks-to-halt-illegal-dumping-of-toxic-oil-waste-into-california-s-imperiled-water-supplies\" target=\"_blank\">Earthjustice filed a lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity in Alameda County Superior Court that challenges California regulators\u2019 emergency rules meant to rein in the state\u2019s disastrous\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.conservation.ca.gov\/dog\/general_information\/Pages\/UndergroundinjectionControl%28UIC%29.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Underground Injection Control (<span class=\"caps\">UIC<\/span>) program<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Officials with the state\u2019s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (<span class=\"caps\">DOGGR<\/span>) have admitted that their agency<a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2015\/02\/11\/not-hundreds-thousands-oil-industry-injection-wells-dumping-wastewater-protected-california-aquifers\" target=\"_blank\">improperly permitted more than 2,500 wells<\/a>\u00a0to pump oil industry wastewater and fluids from enhanced oil recovery techniques like acidization and steam flooding into groundwater aquifers that should be protected under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of shutting down the offending wells, however,\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">DOGGR<\/span>\u00a0issued emergency rules last February that would allow many of them to continue operating until 2017, according to the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/earthjustice.org\/sites\/default\/files\/2015-0507%20DOGGR%20Complaint.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">complaint filed by Earthjustice<\/a>, which seeks to have the new rules thrown out and the wells operating in protected aquifers shut down while new regulations are being developed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBoth the emergency regulations and the status quo fail to protect California\u2019s underground drinking water sources from harm,\u201d the complaint states. \u201cSince\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">DOGGR<\/span>\u00a0continues to fail in implementing its regulatory duties, this Court must vacate the emergency regulations and ensure that\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">DOGGR<\/span>\u00a0complies with the law by ordering\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">DOGGR<\/span>\u00a0to take all immediate action necessary and available to it to meet its obligations to prohibit illegal injection of wastewater into protected aquifers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Environmentalists Are Taking California To Court Over Illegal Oil Industry Wastewater Injection Environmentalists filed a motion requesting a\u00a0preliminary injunction\u00a0today in a California court to immediately stop the daily illegal injection of millions of gallons of oil field wastewater into protected groundwater aquifers in the state. Last week,\u00a0Earthjustice filed a lawsuit\u00a0on behalf of the Sierra Club [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[5492,101,5490,331,5491,412,1278,638,723,3917,1215,5489],"class_list":["post-8232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-aquifers","tag-california","tag-earthjustice","tag-fracking","tag-ground-water","tag-hydraulic-fracturing","tag-oil-industry","tag-pollution","tag-shale-oil","tag-sierra-club","tag-toxins","tag-wastewater-injection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8233,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8232\/revisions\/8233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}