The measure, if approved by voters in November, also would ban all new oil drilling in Monterey County -- California's fourth largest oil-producing county. It would continue to allow the roughly 1,200 existing oil wells there to remain, most of which are located near San Ardo in the Salinas Valley.
Supporters said their goal is to reduce the risk of groundwater pollution from oil drilling, including potential future drilling in the Monterey Shale formation, and to push forward a statewide grass-roots movement.
"There's a deep concern around the threats from the oil industry, especially to water," said Andy Hsia-Coron, a retired schoolteacher from San Juan Bautista who is one of the measure's organizers.
"Polls show Californians are supportive of things to protect their water," he said. "But, unfortunately, the oil industry has had too big a voice in Sacramento and may be too cozy with the governor."
Supporters of the new measure have formed a coalition called Protect Monterey County. It includes some of the activists, like Hsia-Coron, who passed a fracking ban in 2014 in neighboring San Benito County, despite being outspent 14-1 by the oil industry.
Oil industry officials said Tuesday that they will vigorously fight to defeat the measure.
"This county-by-county approach is their attempt to end oil production in California," said Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for Californians for Energy Independence, an industry group funded by Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Aera Energy and other oil companies.
"It's very concerted, it's very strategic, and it has less to do about fracking and more to do with ending oil production. They are very angry with Gov. (Jerry) Brown and his balanced energy policy. He supports wind and solar but also has made it clear that if we are not producing oil locally we will have to import it from foreign companies."
Hanretty said that oil and gas production in Monterey County supports 1,941 jobs and generates $138 million a year in state and local taxes.
Activists who filed paperwork Tuesday at the Monterey County courthouse in Salinas have until early May to collect the signatures of 7,391 registered Monterey County voters to qualify the measure for the ballot, something that is likely to happen.
They said they are frustrated that Brown and state lawmakers haven't banned fracking -- a technique in which water and chemicals are pumped underground to release oil and gas -- so they decided to go around them. Other counties and cities have followed suit in recent years, including Santa Cruz County, whose Board of Supervisors banned fracking in 2014, and Mendocino County, whose voters banned it that year.
Last year, however, Monterey County supervisors voted 3-2 against a ban. Voters rejected a similar ban in 2014 in Santa Barbara County, where the oil industry spent more than $5 million on the "No" campaign.
Meanwhile, a coalition led by the Sierra Club has drafted a general plan amendment that would ban fracking and all new oil production in Santa Clara County.
Katjia Irvin, an activist with the Sierra Club's Loma Prieta chapter, said Tuesday that supporters have been sharing draft language with the five Santa Clara County supervisors and hope to have them vote on it this year.
The Monterey County measure would not only ban fracking, but also another oil production technique that uses acid to extract oil from underground. In addition, it would prohibit underground wastewater disposal from oil drilling after five years. There are about 35 wastewater injection wells in the county now.
Monterey County activists argue that although a huge formation called the Monterey Shale is not yet feasible for drilling, it could be in the future and would require fracking to obtain the oil, so they want a ban beforehand.
"In the past, it has been regarded as economically unrecoverable, but the technology is changing and changing fast," said measure supporter Robert Frischmuth, a Pacific Grove resident and chemical engineer who worked for Shell and Occidental. "The oil companies have run fracking test wells. It won't be long until they want to go after the Monterey Shale."
©2016 the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
