California is taking the Trump administration to court over the Bureau of Land Management’s plan to reopen over a million acres of public lands in the state for fossil fuel extraction.
“The state of California isn’t looking to introduce any more smog, any more water pollution, any more greenhouse gas emissions, or any further risk of earthquakes,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, said Friday announcing the lawsuit. “Adding more fracking to the equation would only make things worse.”
Becerra said California had urged the BLM to withdraw the resource plan, which ends a more than five-year block on oil leasing on federal public lands in the state. The state is now claiming the BLM didn’t conduct a proper environmental review of the effects of fracking under the National Environmental Policy Act, as well as arguing its plan violates the Administrative Procedure Act.
California’s lawsuit follows a similar challenge to the resource plan brought by several environmental groups earlier in the week.
The state’s challenge is its 36th environmental lawsuit against the Trump administration, according to the attorney general’s office, and it’s part of an escalating fight between California and the White House over energy and climate change issues.
Last year, the Trump administration withdrew California’s ability to set its own greenhouse gas standards for cars, which the state has also sued over, and threatened to withhold highway funds and permitting approvals if California didn’t redo state plans for air quality.
Becerra, in his remarks at a news conference Friday, emphasized the air quality impacts that additional fossil fuel drilling would have in the state.
He noted that 95% of drilling in California happens in one county, Kern County, which already isn’t in compliance with federal and state standards for ozone and other air pollution.
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