CALIFORNIA - Using millions of gallons of water and secret chemicals harmful to people, the environment and the earth, oil and gas companies crack open underground rock formations, forcing deposits of oil and gas tucked deep within the earth up to the surface. The waste fluid is left in open-air pits to evaporate, releasing harmful VOC's (volatile organic compounds) into the atmosphere, creating contaminated air, acid rain, and ground level ozone. This is hydraulic fracturing or "fracking."
Now, a huge extraction company, Citidel Exploration, is suing the county of Bitwater in California, population 57,000, for $1.2 billion dollars because it will not allow the multi-million dollar corporation to frack. The suit is based on the idea that the company will lose that amount if they cannot extract 40 million barrels of oil from Bitwater.
Says Citidal Exploraton spokesman, Bernard Madoff said "when there's a profit to be made you can't restrict the use of land, no matter what the environmental costs. Sure, fracking has caused faucets of houses near the sites to shoot flames, but that's residents the price for oil independence from those Arabs."
He concluded, Those Bitwater residents are un-American. We'll drive them into bankruptcy, that will change their minds about fracking."
