Guest View: It’s like cleaning a coffee pot … Really?

It’s October, and we have to brace ourselves for the onslaught of Orwellian propaganda the No on Measure J Big Oil backers will be fobbing on us. Their latest claims would be hilarious if their goal were not so deadly to this community.
Let’s start with a cute slip-up from the San Benito County Cattlemen’s Association, which has backed No on J. They attacked several of its members when those cattlemen questioned the wisdom of the club’s stance. You see, hard-working ranchers like Joe Morris and Sallie Calhoun have merely said out loud that they don’t want their water poisoned by any nearby extreme oil drilling, like fracking.
Because then their cattle would die if that contaminated frack water should leach into a mutual aquifer. That would be bad.
The cattlemen’s association sent an open letter back to Joe, not only saying that he and Measure J supporters are “crying wolf,” but also equating those same folks with “jihadists.”
Them’s fightin’ words to Americans. Talk about going over the top! I remember when my mom was still with us, and the War on Terror was still fresh in everyone’s psyche, and my mom would say, “What is a Yee-Haw? I think I will go on a Yee-Haw. Sounds kinda fun.”
“It’s Jihad, mama,” I offered. “It’s not like a hayride. It’s blind fanatical faith in something insane and it kills other people.”
“Oh, Okay,” she said. “Whatever.” My mom was such a corker.
And the Cattlemen’s Association uses that same epithet with the same blithe abandon. But in this case it’s insulting. It also indicates that the opposition to Measure J is getting desperate.
They say there is no fracking happening in San Benito, so why pass this? Yeah, I don’t think they know what the term “proactive” means. So…sure, don’t pass Measure J, let Big Oil come in and frack the hell out of south county and we will worry about the permanent water contamination…later??
Now here is my favorite: “It’s like cleaning out your coffee pot,” said paid oil cheerleader Kristina Chavez Wyatt, in her opening statement opposing Measure J during a forum in Aromas the other day. That brought down the house (Aromas is a very well-informed community). She was referring to “matrix acidization” oil drilling, equating it with removing the scale and calcium from a kettle. Putrid.
That same lame argument was used by Steve Coombs, oil driller from Newport Beach who operates wastewater injection wells, as well as conventional oil wells, that pump away in the Vallecitos in southeast county. He claims that sticking hydrochloric acid down his oil well pipes for scale removal is harmless, “like the same stuff you throw in your swimming pool.” (Yeah, I toss that in my New Idrian “cement pond” every day.) Then, by a weird extension, he suggested that Measure J would prevent farmers and ranchers from using routine acid treatment to clean the scale from their water wells. Huh??
Measure J is very specific about this. What it would ban is “matrix acidizing,” vastly distinctive from scale removal in that it uses huge amounts of acid and injected far deeper to break up rock to get to the oil. It is a form of oil drilling, not water well pipe cleaning.
Measure J does not ban acid treatment for well maintenance and scale removal.
In fact, the locals who wrote Measure J (sorry Marty, sorry Cattlemen’s Association, it was not the national Center for Biological Diversity) took the language out of the playbook mandated by state oil regulators, or DOGGR, to make sure they made the distinction.
DOGGR is the agency in charge of enacting SB-4, the recent state law that is supposed to keep an eye on extreme oil drilling in California – and tell us exactly what the 649 toxic chemicals are in fracking fluid. But as representatives of the agency admitted to the Board of Supes the other day, it is grossly understaffed and far, far behind its goals. Oh, and they have no idea what is in fracking fluid. Big Oil won’t tell them. It’s “proprietary.” Like the secret formula for Coka-Cola.
Hence, Measure J is born, and San Benito residents, farmers like Dale Coke, Paul Hain and Supervisor Anthony Botelho, and many ranchers like Joe Morris, the Williams of Panoche and Charlie Hinkle of the Spur Ranch have taken their county’s future into their own hands…to save it. They endorse Measure J. Because they don’t want their stock or crops to die from poisoned water.
Vote YES on Measure J, and when this is all over, we can all have a yee-haw hoedown.
Kate Woods is a resident of San Benito County.