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Community Corner

Community Forum on Fracking

Forum to Examine Concerns About Fracking

A
Community Forum in Newbury Park on Sunday, Sept. 22 will address health and
environmental issues surrounding fracking, the process of injecting water, sand
and chemicals underground at high pressure to fracture shale rocks and extract
oil and natural gas.

 Lance
Simmens, state director of Gasland Grassroots, will discuss what Californians
should know about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, at the 7 p.m. forum at the
Conejo Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. His organization is spreading
awareness about issues raised in the documentary film “Gasland Part II,” which
aired on HBO in July.


The
film by Josh Fox revisits communities in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming where
his 2010 film “Gasland” showed residents near fracking sites coping with
polluted water and chronic illnesses. The most dramatic footage showed drinking
water so contaminated that it could be set afire out of the tap.

Simmens
served as a senior advisor to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell for eight years
during a fracking boom in the state. “My personal interactions with many
citizens and communities throughout the state led me to seriously question what
we do not know about fracking,” Simmens wrote in a Huffington Post blog last
March.

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Fracking has begun in the Baldwin Hills oil field in Southern California. Simmens says his goal with Gasland Grassroots is to help California avoid the mistakes made in Pennsylvania relating to water quality and quantity, air contamination, public health impacts, earthquake risks and climate change.


President
Obama has hailed advances in extracting natural gas as a way to reduce the nation’s
dependence on foreign oil. His administration is developing steps to regulate
the process on federal lands.

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“What we do not know
about fracking deserves maximizing scientific scrutiny,” Simmens wrote in his
March blog.  “If we sacrifice our water,

air, and health quality we impose a life sentence upon future generations.”


Simmens is an adjunct
professor of public policy at Santa Monica College. He served as communications
director for the California High Speed Rail Authority and before that headed
the Pennsylvania Governor’s Task force on Wind and Solar Energy Development. He
was one of the first climate change leaders trained by Al Gore and the Climate
Project in 2006, and he has delivered more than 100 presentations on climate
change around the world.

Simmens is a frequent
contributor to the Huffington Post and has published more than 300 articles. He
has written a novel on the perils of fracking that is to be released next year.

The Community Forum is open to the public and free; donations will be accepted. The Conejo Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship is located at 3327 Old Conejo Road in Newbury Park. For information, visit forum.cvuuf.org or call (805) 374-9818.





 

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