California Assemblyman Luis Alejo expressed his position on enhanced fuel recovery in recent comments to the Government Relations Committee of the San Benito County Chamber of Commerce. I often disagree with Alejo on social and employment issues, but I never called him dumb or ineffective. He’s a very savvy guy who understands how both the legislature and real world works.
Alejo knows a lot about Monterey County and its energy operations, more than 650 wells, its agriculture, employment and revenue issues; he does not have to go to North Dakota for examples and neither do we; they are right next door. Alejo recommended a thoughtful, balanced approach to give Senate Bill 4, which he supported, a chance to work and improve it if necessary.
That makes perfect sense given the state’s and especially Monterey County’s decades-long history of safe and secure oil and gas recovery operations of all types with several hundred wells and its enormous agriculture output of $4.38 billion, versus $330 million for San Benito County. They don’t seem to have any of the serious problems used here as scare tactics.
Assembly Member Alejo on this issue –
“I agree there needs to be some more oversight and I’ve worked on bills working with the petroleum industry, with all of the stakeholders frankly, including environmental groups. When people want more oversight, we need to make sure that the water is being monitored, reports are being made to the state agencies while protecting business trade secrets. Let’s see how that goes. That had never been done before. Senate Bill 4 was significant. I supported it.”
“But then when I look at Measure J, sometimes you ask does it go too far because, for example, steam injection has been in south Monterey County for decades; 50 to 60 years. I’ve been there. I’ve done two to three visits down there. That generates anywhere from $4 to $8 million in taxes for Monterey County. There hasn’t been one example that the water got contaminated. The water gets reused – it goes through the reverse osmosis process.”
“It has certainly created jobs, taxes for the state of California and also taxes for Monterey County. That is pretty significant, $7.5 million for the County to put in its general fund. It’s good for jobs; that’s reasonable. So I think that it’s a very charged issue, not only here but in Sacramento, and I try taking an approach that is balanced. I told the proponents that they are so fixated on an absolute ban on fracking. (Senate Bill 4) was a historic first phase of regulation. Let’s see how that goes. We need to see how it works first of all.”
“Given some fine tuning, maybe more needs to be done. But you have to let that process work itself out. I think that there needs to be a uniform, statewide process for major issues like that. Rather than every county or city doing their own local measure … That was an example where we built consensus among all of the stakeholders to have that move forward.”
My personal view matches Alejo’s. Vote NO on Measure J and maintain our options for a better future. If Monterey can safely produce energy and reap the benefits, we can do the same using identical technologies and safeguards.
