David beat Goliath last year when Monterey County voters passed a ballot initiative that bans fracking and new oil and gas wells, and phases out wastewater injection. Despite a $5.4 million oil-industry campaign against it, ballot initiative Measure Z won with over 56 percent of the vote.

Then Goliath struck back. The oil industry marshaled an army of lawyers and sued the county to overturn the will of the people. Following a four-day trial in November, the Monterey County Superior Court upheld the fracking ban but overturned the measure’s prohibitions on the other dangerous oil-industry practices.

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The fact that the fracking ban will stay in place despite the massive legal fight against it is hugely significant. Plus, the grassroots group who sponsored Measure Z, Protect Monterey County, plans to appeal the decision to make sure the initiative is upheld in full.

As an attorney representing Protect Monterey County in this case, I am confident that the appeal will be successful.

California law is crystal clear: Cities and counties have the right to prohibit dangerous activities that could poison the air we breathe and the water we drink. I expect that the appellate court will align its decision with nearly a century of cases upholding similar local protections in places like Los Angeles and Hermosa Beach.

Local initiatives like Measure Z are both possible and urgently needed in California because the state government has been failing miserably in protecting Californians from the health and climate hazards of oil extraction. In fact, Gov. Jerry Brown has rolled out the red carpet for oil companies.

Despite serious health and environmental harms that have led to fracking bans in five European countries, three U.S. states and six California counties, Brown has refused to ban it statewide.

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Brown also killed efforts to bring the state into compliance with underground water-supply protections that irked the oil industry. Indeed, California is in the midst of a water contamination crisis because Brown fired regulators who tried to require proper review of permits to inject oil waste underground.

Rather than immediately shut down thousands of wells discovered to be illegally injecting into protected water supplies, the Brown administration has sought to exempt the affected aquifers from legal protection, turning them into garbage dumps for the oil industry.

Despite its reputation as a climate leader, California is the nation’s third-largest oil-producing state, producing some of the dirtiest and most climate-damaging crude on the planet. Three-quarters of California’s oil production is actually more carbon-intensive than oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada.

Our state cannot continue to produce this dirty oil and meet our climate goals. It makes no sense to allow oil companies to run roughshod over environmental protections to expand oil production, when we must go in the exact opposite direction. Yet California issues thousands of new drilling permits each year and has no plan to curb production.

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Opinion: Megaprojects are hard. Let’s get BART extension right Measure Z’s ban on new oil and gas wells and wastewater injection in Monterey County wouldn’t shut down production in the county. But it would prevent further expansion of oil development here, and help protect the air we breathe and the water we drink.

Big Oil is clearly willing to spend whatever it takes to continue polluting our air and water. But the hard-fought victory over fracking and the continuing battle over the rest of Measure Z should give hope and inspiration that communities across California and the country can stand up to this toxic industry — and win.

Attorney Kassie Siegel is director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.