We are spending 10 days filming in California, from Los Angeles to Napa Valley, for both ‘Dear President Obama’ and a very important side project, a short film called ‘Dear Governor Brown.’ Look for both films this fall!
Long an oil-producing mecca, California has designs on becoming the country’s top producer. One result is that fracking has boomed here in the past three years … as have its neighbors, suffering from increases in bad air and bad water as a result of additional thousands of new wells and re-activated wells.
Hydraulic fracking, as we’ve filmed in twenty states across the U.S. for ‘DPO,’ is common in California, but so are methods that use acid and steam to open up the rocks far below the surface.
In the heart of South Los Angeles, we filmed at the Jefferson Oil site hidden behind green foliage and tall walls. The site is surrounded by neighbors of all ages, mostly Latino. While the workers behind the walls wear hazmat suits when drilling is in process, school kids, parents and grandparents walk the sidewalks not knowing exactly how much toxins are being pumped into their neighborhood’s air and water.
Amazing to us, neither the city nor state tests air quality in the neighborhood, which would no doubt indict the drilling operation as a polluter.
See more of the impact of fracking on California
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