Measure S

 

Measure S establishes a Community Bill of Rights for the people of Mendocino County, built on the right to local community self governance, in order to exercise and secure our unalienable right to protect our health, safety and well being. These rights include the right to live in a healthy and safe ecosystem and the right to protect local water from harm caused by unconventional gas extraction. In order to uphold and protect those rights, this initiative bans all fracking related activities within the County, including the transportation of fracking fluids, and the use of local water for fracking.

 

Our nation was founded on the concept that government is instituted to secure our unalienable rights and derives it’s just powers from the consent of the governed. Activities such as fracking affect our health and safety, our quality of life, the health of our natural environment as well as our property values and must be decided by the Citizens who live here and who will be directly affected, or there is no “consent of the governed.”

 

Yet States routinely issue permits to chartered corporations that make it “legal” for them to violate the rights of the people and refuse to recognize our right to say “no!’ to harmful activities.

 

Measure S challenges those illegitimate laws which violate our fundamental rights. This measure elevates the rights of the people of Mendocino where they belong, above the claimed "rights" of corporations and state agencies that enable fracking corporations to profit from the destruction of local ecosystems and to harm residents and communities.

 

Measure S protects our water by banning fracking and asserts the right of the people of Mendocino to make those kinds of decisions now and into the future.