Special Report: San Benito County faces legal claims following Measure J approval

It’s been three months since Measure J passed in San Benito County, banning fracking. That’s significant because it’s the first place in California with known oil reserves, that’s taken the big step. But that’s far from the end of the story.

NewsChannel 5 has uncovered new information about challenges with the ban and what this could mean for the future of county.

It was just two years ago that it looked like oil could be the next boom for San Benito County. But it wasn’t long before the tables suddenly turned. Several members of county leadership supported Measure J to keep the oil companies out. But now that fracking is banned, oil explorers aren’t going down without a fight. Other cities around the country have found out, it could get expensive.

“Don’t let frackers ruin our land,” shouted some protesters during a rally.

For anti-fracking activists, the passing of Measure J was a big win in November, but what about the war? Three months later they’re back on the front lines. But this time the stakes could be much higher.

Just two days after Measure J passed, banning fracking in San Benito County, Citadel Exploration, a California oil and gas company, filed a claim with the county. It charges Measure J ties up $1.2 billion in oil just waiting to be recovered. But that wasn’t the only one.

In January, Steve Coombs with San Benito-based Patriot Resources filed a claim stating Measure J threatened his livelihood. Then four more claims were made from oil explorers in King City, Bakersfield, Pittsburg, California and Denver, Colorado.

“You’re already in this situation where the measure is essentially shutting down or you know, stopping, you know plans and operations,” Coombs said.

Coombs said fracking is the process of injecting liquid under high-pressure conditions into rocks miles beneath the ground, forcing crude oil to the surface. He said he can’t frack the land he’s already drilling on. But he might need to frack to explore for oil on other properties to which he has the rights. He said he’s already using another tactic called acidization. Now that extraction method is banned by Measure J.

It’s a process he said involves crude oil being pumped up from the reservoir about 3,000 feet underground, then going down a pipe and ending up at a storage tank where later it’s trucked out to a refinery.

Coombs said when a county like San Benito bans oil extraction techniques like fracking, the real losers are the taxpayers.

“It could have impact in the range of 5 to 10 million dollars to the county,” Coombs said.

It could cost taxpayers twice, first the revenue from the oil, and now the potential lawsuits and San Benito isn’t the only one.

Denton, Texas, with a population of about 123,000, was slammed with two lawsuits costing taxpayers about $173,000 after its ban was put in place. Longmont, Colorado, with a population of about 90,000, banned fracking in 2012, which has cost the city about $136,000 so far. Lafayette, Colorado, with a population of about 27,000 had legal costs that reached about $74,000, forcing the city to give up its ban.

“You have help. That is to say when I said we expected to get pro bono help, we did,” Dryden, New York town board member Linda Lavine said.

In Dryden, New York, with a population of about 15,000, it’s a very different story. When the oil companies sued over the fracking ban, lawyers lined up to defend it at no cost. That’s what anti-fracking activists are hoping for in San Benito County.

“The oil industry attorneys have promised to bury our county with lawsuit,” said Mary Hsia-Coron with San Benito Rising.

But it could well be that San Benito County has its own secret weapon.

“We accumulated almost $4,000 and then fortunately a grant came through for $25,000,” Hsia-Coron said.

That money is coming from the 11th hour project, run by Wendy Schmidt, married to Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. With financial backing like that and continued support from environmental groups, the battle to ban fracking is alive and well, leaving small oil explorer likes Coombs twisting in the wind.

“As a result of Measure J, we’ve put this permitting effort on hold because it’s really unclear to us right now how we can long-term recoup our investment. What we do in the future is a little unclear right now,” Coombs said.

With taxpayer dollars hanging in the balance, what is clear, this war is far from over. Any one of the six claims filed against the county could turn into a lawsuit at any time. The county is already seeking legal advice from a firm in San Francisco, which said if lawsuits come they will be prepared.

San Benito Rising said it also talked with people who worked on the ban in Dryden, NY, to try to learn from what happened there. In that case, the New York Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Dryden and that eventually helped lead to a statewide ban on fracking in New York.

For more information on this story, click here: http://benitolink.com/oil-company-sues-san-benito-county