The Center for Biological Diversity, Earthworks and Food & Water Watch have made false and misleading claims that wildly inflate the amount of water used in fracking operations in California.

• “Fracking uses enormous amounts of water even as California suffers from a devastating drought.” – The Center for Biological Diversity, “California Fracking”
• “Horizontal shale wells can use anywhere from 2 to 10 million gallons of water to fracture a single well. The extraction of so much water for fracking has raised concerns about the ecological impacts to aquatic resources, as well as dewatering of drinking water aquifers.” – Earthworks, “Fracturing 101”
• “In order to ensure a sustainable water supply for future generations, we must ban fracking.” – Food & Water Watch, “Fracking, Climate Change and the Water Crisis”

However, DRILLING DOWN, the facts show:

• According to a California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) peer-reviewed study on the impacts oil and gas operations, “In California, a hydraulic fracturing operation consumes on average 140,000 gallons of water per well.” This aligns with the findings of a 2012 analysis of 568 California well reports, which found that “the average amount of water used for hydraulic fracturing in California in 2012 was 116,535 gallons per well.” Both of these fact-based figures pale in comparison to the “millions of gallons” narrative pushed by activists.
• Fracking in California requires an extremely small amount of water compared to other human uses:

o   California’s total water footprint is 64 million acre feet per year.

o   The state uses approximately 33 million acre feet of water for agricultural purposes per year.

o   Golf courses in California use an estimated 300,000 acre feet of water per year.

o   The residential swimming pools of Los Angeles alone use a total of 2,300 acre feet per year.

o   Meanwhile, on average just 800 acre feet are used for well stimulations statewide in California per year.

• The July 2015 CCST report also confirmed the tiny impact of fracking on water resources in California: “Hydraulic fracturing represents less than 0.2% of all human water uses in regions where stimulation occurs.”