Energy policy at crossroads as Kern plans for thousands of new oil, gas wells
❚ One in four children in the southern Central Valley has asthma. Globally, almost 20 percent of all premature deaths in 2018 were caused by fossil fuel pollution.
There’s a saying on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction: “Kern County is the Texas of California.” To those who profit from oil and gas operations in California, this may seem like a compliment. But to frontline communities bearing the brunt of the resulting air and water pollution, it is a far different picture.
The people who live in Kern County are exposed to some of the worst air pollution in the country, with oil and gas extraction a leading cause, and they face high rates of the resulting health problems. But rather than treat this situation as a public health emergency, county leaders are instead voting on Monday on a proposal to nearly double the number of oil and gas wells in the county. The resulting ordinance would allow for more than 40,000 new wells over the next two decades, with no opportunity for review by the people living, working, and going to school near those wells.
Kern County currently accounts for about 75 percent of all oil and gas production in California, a state where a strong majority of residents living within one mile of toxic oil and gas sites are Black, Indigenous, Latinx and people of color.
Oil and gas extraction releases a toxic soup of chemicals such as methane, benzene and formaldehyde into the air and water. Numerous scientific studies show a direct link between oil and gas production and a wide range of adverse health impacts, from asthma and cancer to high-risk pregnancies and preterm births. One in four children in the southern Central Valley has asthma. Globally, almost 20 percent of all premature deaths in 2018 were caused by fossil fuel pollution.
In 2014, a toxic gas leak from an underground oil well pipeline in the Nelson Court area of the city of Arvin forced families from their homes for months, including Elvia Garcia, whose loved ones experienced nosebleeds, bone pain, nausea, and excruciating headaches. Today, authorities say their home is safe, but their symptoms persist. “I don’t want anybody else to go through what we are going through,” says Elvia. “For my neighbors who live with oil wells near their homes and schools, the effects are devastating.”
According to the recent California Oil & Gas Waste Report from Earthworks, California is one of the worst states in the U.S. when it comes to regulating the industry’s waste, from allowing crops to be irrigated with toxic wastewater to storing waste in unlined pits and injecting it into protected groundwater aquifers. From 2017 to 2020, 21 aquifers in California were exempted from drinking water protections to allow oil and gas companies to use those aquifers to dispose of their wastes. Eighteen of those 21 exemptions were in Kern County.
Teresa Luque represents residents who want to build a safer, cleaner community in Arvin, but the county’s pending oil ordinance would make that impossible. It would create more pollution that intensifies health problems, including the effects of the coronavirus. “The wind carries methane and fossil fuel toxins. The oil industry is making our soils sick, filling them with poison,” Teresa said to local officials. “If you don’t come help us, at least don’t become our obstacle.”
Oil companies come and go from Kern County. Chevron jettisoned more than 10 percent of its regional workforce last year when market conditions changed. The property taxes Kern County receives from oil companies, that county officials say are so important to the local economy, decreased from 33 percent in 2010 to only 16 percent in 2019. Green jobs, on the other hand, are on the rise. With investment on the county level and policy initiatives from Gov. Gavin Newsom, green industries can create high-quality, family-wage jobs that don’t pollute our air and water and don’t make families sick. Kern County families deserve these jobs.
Whether you live in Kern County, elsewhere in California or anywhere in the U.S., you can write to Newsom and ask him to be a true leader for environmental and social justice. Tell the governor to urge the Kern County Board of Supervisors to reject this ordinance, and instead, mobilize a just transition to a green economy.
Melissa Troutman is a Research & Policy Analyst at Earthworks. An award-winning journalist and filmmaker, her work includes the documentaries “Triple Divide” and the Rights of Nature film, “Invisible Hand.” Juan Flores is a Community Organizer with the Center for Race, Poverty & the Environment in Delano.