Last Monday, November 9, the Kern County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to approve a deeply flawed oil and gas zoning law that greenlights drilling more than 70,000 new wells in the county over the next two decades. Ignoring the vocal opposition of county residents who are already overburdened by toxic pollution, the Board of Supervisors granted the oil industry's request to prioritize the profits of Big Oil over the health of the community and our environment.
Kern County, located in California's Central Valley, is the nation's top oil-producing county. (Despite California's reputation as a climate leader, it is the nation's 3rd largest oil-producing state -- trailing only Texas and North Dakota.) Approximately 75 percent of the oil extracted in California comes from Kern County, and the county is home to 95 percent of the fracking that occurs in the state.
After a mid-day rally led by frontline community members, environmental justice groups, and their allies (including the Sierra Club) -- and a 9-hour public hearing during which many residents testified against the zoning amendment -- the County approved the plan to shield polluting oil and gas drilling from further environmental review and public scrutiny.
A mid-day rally led by local environmental justice groups, including the Center for Race, Poverty & the Environment, in front of the Kern County Board of Supervisors hearing in Bakersfield, California, on November 9. (Photo by Brooke Anderson)
Fast-tracking the permitting for polluting oil and gas activities poses unacceptable risks to Kern County residents, who already suffer from the harmful effects of drilling in and around their communities. County residents -- including children who attend school near oil and gas wells -- already breathe some of the nation's dirtiest air. In the San Joaquin Valley, the southern portion of the Central Valley where Kern County is located, the prevalence of childhood asthma has reached "epidemic levels."[1]
More than 290,000 people live within a mile of a well in Kern County, and communities of color are disproportionately affected.[2] More than 75 percent of the 122,000 county residents who live both within a mile of a well and in a community that is most vulnerable to pollution are people of color.[3]
"We Stand with Kern” (photo by Josh Sonnenfeld, Sierra Club)
The oil industry and the County have characterized the revision as an effort to "streamline" permit procedures, but it is actually a brazen and unprecedented attempt to fast-track future oil development by circumventing state environmental laws. The Sierra Club and its allies submitted comprehensive comments on both the draft and final "environmental impact reports" (EIR) for the zoning revision. Although the County spent years developing the draft EIR, the public was given only 60 days to review and comment on the 1,800-page document.
The EIR claims to comprehensively evaluate the impacts of oil and gas projects over the next 25 years -- an impossible undertaking. The zoning amendment establishes a purportedly "ministerial" permit procedure for new oil and gas development within the County -- a process that the county admits is normally used for straightforward, uncontroversial matters like "building permits or marriage licenses."[4] Using a comparable "ministerial" procedure -- one that avoids future environmental review or public hearings -- to approve more than 70,000 new wells in a 3,700 square-mile area over the next two decades is simply unacceptable.
Photo by Brooke Anderson
There are numerous other fatal flaws in the County's analysis. For example, the County attempted to avoid future environmental review by labeling the document a "project" EIR. This attempt to characterize tens of thousands of potential new wells on millions of acres and over several decades as a single "project" is patently absurd.
The County also understated the serious air pollution caused by all this oil and gas drilling -- an error that is particularly problematic in Kern County, where levels of harmful air pollutants already exceed federal health-based standards. And, as California enters the fourth year of a catastrophic drought, the failure to adequately consider water quality and supply impacts is troubling. Drilling and fracking can contaminate groundwater, and California's Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources recently admitted to issuing thousands of permits -- many in Kern County -- allowing the oil and gas industry to inject toxic wastewater into protected aquifers that may contain drinking water.
The County also failed to adequately consider alternatives, many of which could reduce environmental impacts associated with oil and gas drilling in Kern County -- including alternatives that would ban fracking, allow fewer wells, and require the use of renewable energy to power oil and gas operations.
Over 500 people attended the November 9th Kern County Board of Supervisors meeting. (Photo by Brooke Anderson)
Even as California and our nation as a whole are moving away from dirty fossil fuels and transitioning to clean energy, Kern County's zoning amendment -- pushed through at the request of Big Oil's lobbyists -- is designed to further accelerate oil and gas drilling in the nation's #1 oil-producing county. The Board of Supervisors should be working to lead Kern County toward a healthy, clean energy future, not doubling down on dirty fossil fuels to fill Big Oil's coffers -- all at the expense of our environment and the health of a community already plagued by unacceptable levels of toxic pollution.
[1] Place Matters for Health in the San Joaquin Valley: Ensuring Opportunities for Good Health for All, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (March 2012), available at https://www.fresnostate.edu/chhs/cvhpi/documents/cvhpi-jointcenter-sanjoaquin.pdf
[2] Drilling in California: Who's at Risk?, NRDC (Oct. 2014), available at www.nrdc.org/health/files/california-fracking-risks-report.pdf
[3] Id. at 15.
[4] Revisions to the Kern County Zoning Ordinance, 2015 C, July 27, 2015, available at http://www.co.kern.ca.us/planning/pdfs/eirs/oil_gas/oil_gas_zoning_amend_wksp_pp2_072715.pdf