Turnbull Canyon’s Fracking Problem
by Michelle Ordoñéz
Despite the ghost stories and chequered past you hear about Turnbull Canyon, the dangers that lay in those hills are all to real and familiar to Whittier residents. Rather than tall tales about insane asylums or haunted meeting places, the true strife afflicting Turnbull Canyon is a deal that the City of Whittier made with Matrix Oil Company. The deal was to start hydraulic fracturing, or fracking as it’s commonly known, to get oil and natural gas from deep below the canyon. Fracking is a highly controversial enhanced drilling technique that involves shooting pressurized water (and, sometimes, chemicals) into the ground to break up shale pockets where oil and gas is trapped.
Fracking is hydraulic drilling into the Earth for oil and gas. This action scars the Earth and leaves the land barren.
Locally, residents near Turnball Canyon are worried about how much of their peace and quiet, not to mention the integrity of a favorite green-space preserve, is endangered by the deal the city cut with the County of Los Angeles and Matrix Oil.
Turnbull Canyon is under Los Angeles County as a designated natural preserve, which restricts development and protects the land. However, the City of Whittier went out of its jurisdiction and sold the land to Matrix Oil despite it being under Los Angeles County protection.
Whittier signed a contract with the oil company that would bring in $1.2 million per year for ten years in exchange for allowing fracking in the canyon. The deal shook up local residents concerned for the wildlife, the water supply, their property values and the disruption in daily life.
Where would the canyon’s coyotes be pushed too? Would oil leak into the water supply? Would their lives have a background noise of hydraulic drills and heavy trucks up and down the streets of their once peaceful neighborhoods?
Fracking does not just affect aesthetics, but also the health and safety of citizens. Food and Water Watch stated that leaking and leeching of oil can invade irrigation and water systems, causing potential health problems such as damage to internal organs. The possibility of methane gas and other chemicals from flow-back water can infect the water table. Damage to the California water table from fracking has been in the news recently.
Not only will this cause a disruption in water supply, but also the wildlife that lives in Turnbull Canyon. Coyotes, rabbits, and rattlesnakes are being pushed out of their natural homes and into the residential areas by the hills. Coyotes are known in Whittier for attacking small pets.
Whittier Hills Oil Watch, a nonpartisan organization, has kept a close eye on what is happening in the hills. In June 2013, there was a tentative judge’s ruling that stopped the project from moving forward until a further ruling was to be made. That ruling came in October 2013, and the City of Whittier lost. The residents believed they had won the battle, however in June 2015, the oil project was about to start up again, angering and betraying residents, and so the protests continued. Is that why the oil project still lies in the site like a graveyard of mangled metal and mess? Is this the reason why they never restored the land to its natural state?
The San Gabriel Tribune recently published an article that stated the fracking may appear again, but this time in La Habra Heights’ Hills. Despite most residents being against fracking, there is still a fight to keep the fracking alive, just moving sites constantly, until residents do not realize what lies in their backyard.
