Gabby Brown, gabby.brown@sierraclub.org
Los Angeles, CA -- This morning, local Baldwin Hills residents and environmental advocates delivered thousands of petition signatures to the LA County Department of Regional Planning calling for stronger health and safety protections for communities living near the Inglewood Oil Field.
The Inglewood Oil Field is the largest urban oil field in the country and more than a million people live within five miles of its boundaries. One year ago this week, a containment tank spilled in the oil field, releasing a cloud of toxic benzene and exposing residents within 4,100 feet to a known carcinogen that reached almost seven times the EPA legal limit at the oil field fence line.
The current safety standards governing the oil field allow oil operations to take place just 400 feet from homes and schools, putting families in the predominantly African American community of Baldwin Hills at risk of future spill incidents as well as ongoing air pollution and negative health effects. In an initial draft update to the safety standards released in September, the County failed to meaningfully strengthen these standards, including by ignoring calls from local residents to increase the buffer zone around the oil field to 2,500 feet.
The comments delivered today from local residents urge County Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas to listen to community concerns and direct the County Department of Regional Planning to update these proposed safeguards to better address the threats Inglewood Oil Field poses to public health and the environment.
“The county’s current proposal falls woefully short of what’s needed to adequately protect Los Angeles residents from the dangers of neighborhood oil drilling, and we’re here today to send a strong message that our communities deserve better,” said Sierra Club Senior Campaign Representative Monica Embrey. “This massive oil field has been allowed to operate just feet from our homes and schools for far too long while regulators ignore serious concerns expressed by nearby residents. It’s time for the county to start taking these concerns seriously and take meaningful action to protect our communities and our climate.”
“The draft regulations do little more than demonstrate the County is putting its head in the sand when it comes to this oil field,” said Maya Golden-Krasner, Deputy Director & Senior Attorney with the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity. “By making only minor tweaks to its outdated regulations, the County completely ignores the community’s concerns, the climate crisis, and its own sustainability plan, which calls for a managed phase out of drilling by 2045.”
“As LA's leading environmental justice coalition addressing neighborhood oil production, we are deeply concerned that LA County has thus far ignored both the concerns of residents -- the vast majority of them people of color -- living fenceline to the nation's largest urban oil field, and the mounting scientific evidence that neighborhood oil production represents a clear and present danger to communities,” said Martha Dina Arguello, Executive Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles and Co-Chair, STAND-LA Coalition. “We urge the County to follow the lead of its own Sustainability Plan -- adopt a 2500-foot human health and safety buffer and pursue a just transition off of fossil fuels that meets the needs of workers and communities. We call on the County to heed the call of the hundreds of residents and advocates who are weighing in now on drastically strengthening the Community Standards District."
About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with more than 3.5 million members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person's right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.