As an MBA and environmental advocate, I am very concerned about the negative economic impacts natural gas drilling would have on Monterey County if ever allowed. Natural gas is being advertised as a bridge fuel for a clean energy future that will reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil, but the dangers that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, pose to the environment and local communities is incompletely understood and potentially disastrous. Water use is a particular concern, since sourcing, using and disposing of fracking water is extremely problematic.

Last weekend Director Josh Fox premiered Gasland II in Monterey, and revealed scandalous inadequacies in industry drilling practices. Unlike an oil deposit that can be sucked out as if through a straw, fracking is an extremely invasive approach that literally fractures rock beds underground. By pressure-driving millions of gallons of water laced with lubricants and toxic chemicals thousands of feet underground, methane trapped in rock formations is released and allowed to come to the surface.

Of the millions of gallons of water used to frack a well, only about half comes back up. Which begs the question, what happens to the other half? When a well is drilled, a concrete casing is supposed to prevent the ‘fracking fluid’ and methane from leaking into other layers and contaminating aquifers. Thanks to trade secrets, we don’t actually know the chemical cocktail that comprises fracking fluid, or have any power to regulate those chemicals, even though they include known carcinogens such as benzene and toluene. However these casings are extremely unreliable – as industry data shows that 5% fail immediately, and after 30 years 60% of wells have casing failures.

Think about what this means. Right now in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, there are more than a hundred thousand wells drilled, and the state doesn’t even know the exact locations of all of them. And in 30 years, half of those wells will have the potential to be leaking this stuff into our water supply.

The water that does come back up is contaminated with toxic chemicals and ‘normally occurring’ radioactive materials (NORMs) found thousands of feet underground, so it needs to be disposed of. Many wells were dumping used water into abandoned mine shafts and other underground reservoirs, until low-grade earthquakes started occurring in places like Ohio, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Some states have banned dumping frack water underground, but that doesn’t stop the constant low-grade earthquakes that literally shaking towns to their foundations in places where water was already dumped.

Monterey already has water shortage concerns, and large tourism and agriculture industries that depend on pristine natural resources. Add our prime location on the San Andreas fault line, and there is too much to lose by allowing this practice in our county. Fracking can cost a county millions in loss of water, industry and other natural resources. Please don’t support this invasive and unnecessary industry, and stay committed to the real bridge technologies – advanced renewables including wind and solar, and the smart grid technologies we need to take full advantage of these alternatives.