"The canvassers are backed by the oil industry in its quest to stop a new law that bans wells near residential areas and imposes new environmental controls. If petition circulators succeed in gathering enough signatures, the law would be blocked until the 2024 election."
"Beth Harvey had just finished grocery shopping when someone asked her to sign a petition outside a Trader Joe’s in an affluent Oakland neighborhood. The petition would keep oil companies from drilling near homes, schools and other sensitive sites, the canvasser told her.
“I was relying on what he said,” Harvey recalled. “I was putting my groceries in the trunk, and so I just very hurriedly said, ‘Oh, yes, I’ll go for that.’ And I signed it.”
Harvey, an outpatient case manager at a children’s mental health clinic, thinks others who signed the petition in this progressive Oakland community probably thought it would prevent neighborhood oil drilling too. “Rockridge isn’t really known for its pro-oil stance,” she deadpanned.
That may be why the signature gatherer told Harvey that the petition would protect people from oil drilling when in fact it aimed to do the opposite: overturn a recently enacted law boosting health and safety regulations on neighborhood oil and gas drilling. "
Liza Gross reports for Inside Climate News November 30, 2022.
