With pumpjacks nodding in the background, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed new laws to hold oil companies accountable and protect neighborhoods from oil development, protections community groups have fought more than a decade to win.
“I just want to breathe for a moment because it has been a long and winding road to get here,” said Martha Dina Argüello, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, standing in front of active oil wells in Los Angeles’ Inglewood Oil Field.
“This moment has been fueled by years of persistent and principled organizing by many of the community organizations that are represented here,” Argüello said. “Communities that have lived with the harmful effects of oil drilling and pollution where we live, work, play and learn.”
Of more than 1 million Californians who live near active oil and gas wells, more than 60 percent are in Los Angeles County and most are Black, Latino or socioeconomically marginalized, researchers reported last year.
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“The oil industry has fought back with its wealth, power, dirty tactics and profits made off the backs of our communities,” Argüello said. “We have faced this industry with its deep pockets and we have prevailed. Justice has prevailed.”
Last month, activists rallied in Sacramento to urge their state senators to pass the “make polluters pay” package. The bills passed the state Senate in late August, just under the deadline, and reached the governor’s desk a few weeks ago.
Newsom signed the bills on a Los Angeles County soccer field where kids struggled to breathe while playing in the shadow of polluting oil wells.
The laws affirm local governments’ authority to restrict or ban oil drilling (A.B. 3233), accelerate the timeline for plugging the state’s tens of thousands of idle wells (A.B. 1866) and penalize companies that operate low-producing wells within the Baldwin Hills Conservancy (A.B. 2716) in southwest Los Angeles County, where the signing ceremony took place.
It was an emotional moment for Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts, who said he and others who grew up near the Inglewood Oil Field were told as kids that the oil wells were dinosaurs. “We believed they had dinosaurs over here.”
But they also knew that anytime people were displaced to make way for freeways or burdened with harmful activities, it happened in Black and brown neighborhoods, he said. He thanked the governor and legislators for cleaning up low-producing wells and directing funds back to the community to give kids the opportunity “to know something other than an oil field.”
A.B. 3233 overrides recent court decisions that overturned local ordinances, including those passed in the city and county of Los Angeles and Monterey County. The law affirms local governments’ right to regulate polluters in their communities.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell led the county effort to restrict drilling in one of the nation’s most densely populated counties. She said her son, who has asthma, “tried to play soccer on this field.”
As someone who has represented a district including the largest urban oil field in the country for years, Mitchell said, “what I have learned is that proximity matters.”
Living, working, going to school and playing near these wells has “caused multi-generational harm,” Mitchell said, gesturing to the pump jacks rising and falling behind her. “Those days are coming to an end.”
A.B. 2716, authored by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles), prohibits companies from operating wells that produce less than 15 barrels of oil a day within the Baldwin Hills Conservancy, and requires them to pay a $10,000 a month penalty for a well that has been low-producing for more than a year. Hundreds of oil wells operate in the area, which sits next to a state park and the soccer field where Mitchell’s son played.
A.B. 1866 increases fees for operators who fail to plug and clean up the thousands of wells that sit idle in California. “There are more than 40,000 idle oil wells that are leaking into our groundwater and polluting our air, and the oil companies are not taking responsibility,” said author Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara). “It is not the taxpayers’ responsibility to take care of this pollution.”
That these bills are now state law is “a huge victory for frontline communities that have been bearing the brunt of oil and gas pollution for decades,” said Hollin Kretzmann, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which worked with legislators on the contents of A.B. 3233 and A.B. 1866. “It’s a remarkable achievement to get these bills signed into law,” Kretzmann told Inside Climate News. “It’s a huge step in the right direction.”
Even as Newsom thanked the advocates and legislators gathered around him for getting the bills to his desk, he warned that there’s still a battle ahead. Friday, legislators will meet in a special session Newsom called to stabilize gas prices.
“We are taking on Big Oil and have a real chance of winning,” Newsom said, thanking Hart for co-authoring the legislation to stop gas price spikes.
“Californians are paying $1.51 more than the national average,” Newsom said, noting that oil companies are raising gas prices even as crude oil prices are dropping. “They are the polluted heart of this climate crisis. And it’s finally, finally time to hold Big Oil accountable.”
Community members who worked years to protect their neighbors from polluting oil and gas wells are under no illusion their work is done.
“We remain steadfast in our mission and dedication to protect our communities from both the immediate and long-term health impacts of living in the shadow and the fumes of oil drilling,” said Argüello of Physicians for Social Responsibility. And that means “watchdogging” the implementation of these laws, to ensure communities benefit.
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Liza Gross
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Liza Gross is a reporter for Inside Climate News based in Northern California. She is the author of The Science Writers’ Investigative Reporting Handbook and a contributor to The Science Writers’ Handbook, both funded by National Association of Science Writers’ Peggy Girshman Idea Grants. She has long covered science, conservation, agriculture, public and environmental health and justice with a focus on the misuse of science for private gain. Prior to joining ICN, she worked as a part-time magazine editor for the open-access journal PLOS Biology, a reporter for the Food & Environment Reporting Network and produced freelance stories for numerous national outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Discover and Mother Jones. Her work has won awards from the Association of Health Care Journalists, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Society of Professional Journalists NorCal and Association of Food Journalists.
