I can’t begin to express the disgust, coupled with fear, that I experienced when I learned that Venoco has been acidizing right off our coast. I hope that since the EDC brought this to light, as reported in The Santa Barbara Independent on February 12, people in the area will rise up with me to stop the oil industry from going to such detrimental lengths to mine their black gold.

Acidizing is a new and unregulated technology similar to hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking) that could potentially have dangerous repercussions. While fracking has already gotten a bad name, Venoco tried to calm our nerves by stating in the The Independent on January 16 that the company has no plans to frack our waters. Venoco clearly forgot to mention it has been implementing similar technology to dissolve underwater rock with chemicals that end up in our ocean.

Santa Barbara has always led the environmental front ever since hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil fouled our beaches during the 1969 oil spill. Now we are letting the same oil rigs use underdeveloped technology right under our noses.

Please Santa Barbara, let’s stop allowing these guys to find loopholes. Support a ban on fracking and all her sister technologies here in California.

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