Nearly a year after voters approved Measure Z, establishing some of the nation’s toughest oil and gas restrictions, county supervisors continued molding a critical ordinance that would establish a process for considering exemptions from the local regulations for oil and gas operators as well as royalty holders.
On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors considered a revised draft ordinance and heard from both proponents and opponents of Measure Z, which prohibits land uses in support of oil and gas production well stimulation techniques including hydraulic fracturing or fracking, along with land uses in support of oil and gas wastewater injection and impoundment after a five-year phase-out period, and bans all new oil and gas wells in the unincorporated county.