Calif. sues White House to halt oil drilling plans

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California took legal action Friday to block the Trump administration’s plans to open federal lands in California to oil and gas drilling, including the practice of hydraulic fracturing.

The federal lawsuit announced by state Attorney General Xavier Becerra comes after President Donald Trump’s administration announced details of its plan to open more than a million acres of public and private land in California to fracking, ending a five-year moratorium on leasing federal land in California to oil and gas developers. Plans for the expansion of drilling in the state were recently approved by the Bureau of Land Management.

“BLM’s decision to advance this half-baked proposal isn’t just misguided, it’s downright dangerous,” Becerra said in a statement Friday. “The risks to both people and the environment associated with fracking are simply too high to ignore. But that’s essentially what BLM is doing. We won’t ignore the facts and science when it comes to protecting our people, economy and environment — and we’re taking the Trump administration to court to prove it.”

The lawsuit alleges that the BLM’s final environmental impact statement violates the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act because it fails to consider the danger posed to people who might live near oil and gas wells.

Along with the attorney general, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the Trump administration include Gov. Gavin Newsom, the California Air Resources Board, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Department of Water Resources.

Environmental groups filed a similar lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles earlier this week, citing the threat to public health and potential damage to recreational areas caused by fracking.

In an attempt to undercut the president’s plan, Newsom and the Legislature put in place a new law last year prohibiting oil pipelines or other essential infrastructure from crossing state lands.

Trump’s plan targets public and private land spread across eight counties in Central California: eastern Fresno, western Kern, Kings, Madera, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Ventura. Some of the parcels outlined in the plan are next to Los Padres National Forest, Carrizo Plain National Monument and Wind Wolves Preserve.

In November, Newsom stopped the approval of new hydraulic fracturing in the state until the permits for those projects can be reviewed by an independent panel of scientists. The Democrat also imposed a moratorium on new permits for steam-injected oil drilling, another extraction method opposed by environmentalists that was linked to a massive petroleum spill in Kern County over the summer.

Hydraulic fracturing involves shooting a high-pressure mix of water, sand and chemicals deep underground to extract oil and natural gas. Cyclic steam injection pumps superheated vapor into wells to loosen and liquefy crude oil.

Newsom’s announcement was hailed by environmental and conservation groups that have been urging the governor to ban new oil and gas drilling and completely phase out fossil fuel extraction in California, one of the nation’s top petroleum-producing states.

The petroleum industry criticized Newsom’s action, saying California already has some of the strictest regulations and environmental protections in the world and that curtailing oil production in the state will have serious economic consequences.

California has filed more than 65 lawsuits over Trump administration actions on a variety of issues, including more than two dozen challenges to policies proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department and other federal agencies responsible for setting energy- and fuel-efficiency standards.