Is our local oil scandal too local for the Tribune?

 

By Andrew Christie, Chapter Director

If you’re a news editor with a small newspaper in a small city with a small reporting staff, you rely on the national news wire and big city papers for a lot of stories. It’s how you keep your readers informed of what’s going on in the rest of the country and the world.

You are especially on the lookout for national news with a potential local angle. When you get those stories – usually, in our case, Nuclear Regular Commission actions or Senate hearings related to Diablo Canyon  -- you add a paragraph or two on related local actions by the County Supervisors, or maybe a quote from the Mothers for Peace or Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility.

Today, the Trib picked up a story from the AP wire and ran it under the headline “State regulators concerned over oil field operations near water,” the spreading statewide scandal involving California’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), which has allowed oil and gas companies to inject wastewater from their drilling wells into groundwater aquifers that were supposed to be legally off limits.

In February, when it was thought the problem involved no more than 2,500 oil field wells, the Tribune picked up the original story from the Associated Press. So did we, in the March issue of the Santa Lucian (“Oil in Your Water: Pismo caught in oil wastewater scandal”), with one obvious difference: we noted the local angle, printing a map showing the location of eleven of those 2,500 wells. They’re in the Freeport McMoran oil field, right off Price Canyon Road and hard by Pismo Creek.

On May 8, I sent the Tribune a letter thanking them for reporting on growing concerns in the Central Valley over the use of recycled oil wastewater on crops. I pointed out that their more immediate concern on the subject of oil wastewater contamination might be the oil drilling wastewater being injected into a local protected aquifer in violation of state and federal law, and DOGGR’s intention to allow this practice to continue until February 2017. I included the helpful website where they could see for themselves -- and publish for all local residents to see -- the location of those illegal injection wells.

They didn’t print the letter. And today, in picking up the AP story of the spreading injection well scandal, they again did not add any mention of the local angle. Nor did they include the news that, almost two weeks ago, we sued DOGGR to halt the practice immediately rather than allow them to take years to think about ceasing to put the state’s protected aquifers at risk.

Hey, Trib: What’s up?

Don’t you want to have a reporter ring up Freeport McMoran for a chat?

Should you perhaps inquire of members of the Pismo Beach City Council or City or County officials to inquire about any concerns they may have about what may be spreading through the aquifer just above Pismo Beach and how long the state intends to allow it to go right on spreading?

Do you have any interest in where state regulators place our local illegal oil wastewater injection wells on the statewide spectrum of potential risk  each of the 2,500-plus wells poses to public water wells?

Is not the potential contamination of local groundwater during an epic drought a news story of interest? Or is it of interest only if reported from a distance?