Avenal News

Whatever crimes they committed, the inmates at two state prisons in the San Joaquin Valley weren't given death sentences.

An attorney representing inmates at two Northern California prisons told a federal judge on Monday that an airborne fungus occurring in the San Joaquin Valley presents enough of a deadly threat to some inmates at the facilities that they should be transferred immediately.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is an environmentally risky oil production method of pumping under pressure large volumes of water, sand and chemicals underground to bubble to the surface heavy tar-like oil left in depleted oil wells and to reach deep deposits of oil and natural gas.