Companies Quietly Fracking Off California Coast For Decades, Regulators To Zoom In

ASSOCIATED PRESS, August 15, 2013, 7:49 AM

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California regulators on Thursday were set to take up offshore fracking after revelations that the practice had quietly occurred off the coast since the late 1990s.

The California Coastal Commission added the issue at the last minute to its agenda during its monthly meeting. A recent report by The Associated Press documented at least a dozen instances of hydraulic fracturing in the Santa Barbara Channel, site of a disastrous 1969 oil spill that spurred the modern environmental movement. Federal regulators earlier this year approved a new project that has yet to begin.