• On April 22—also known as Earth Day—U.S. Rep. Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara) introduced a bill that would place a moratorium on offshore fracking in federal waters off the West Coast pending a full environmental review of the practice. Under the Offshore Fracking Transparency and Review Act, no hydraulic fracturing or acid well stimulation treatment may take place in the Pacific Outer Continental Shelf until the Secretary of the Interior conducts a preliminary study and environmental impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act. The bill would also require the Department of the Interior to create and maintain a list of all offshore fracking and acidizing activities that have taken place or will take place in that region, as well as require notification of all relevant state and local regulatory agencies after an application for an offshore fracking permit is received. “Today we celebrate Earth Day, a day established largely in repsonse to the devastating 1969 oil spill off the Central Coast,” Capps said in a press release. “This week, we also commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. These are two of the most devastating environmental catastrophes in the history of our nation, and we must do everything we can to ensure our economy and the environment don’t one day again face the same devastation they endured during these two terrible events.”
• After a second hearing, the bill that would remove California’s personal belief vaccine exemptions passed, 7-2, out of the Senate Education Committee on April 22. The bill would basically make it so that any child attending any school has to be vaccinated, unless there’s some sort of medical reason for them not to be. During the first hearing, a week earlier, many parents and children testified against the bill, saying they didn’t believe vaccines were safe and that they were worried the bill would deprive young people of a right to education, according to the LA Times. Some committee members said they had the same concerns. In response, State Sens. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) and Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica)—who co-authored the bill—altered their bill to make it possible for multiple familes to jointly home-school their children without having them vaccinated and added an exemption for students enrolled in independent study programs run by a public school system.
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 7, 2015.
