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This Jan. 16, 2015, file photo shows pumpjacks operating at the Kern River Oil Field in Bakersfield, Calif. | Jae C. Hong, File/AP
California s fossil fuel expansion plan to test Newsom s clean energy record
SACRAMENTO Kern County officials approved a plan that could increase the number of oil wells in California by a staggering 40 percent or more over the next 15 years a shift that is unfolding even as Gov. Gavin Newsom works to burnish his clean energy credentials.
Experts and insiders expect the Newsom administration will honor the local decision by signing off on many of the drilling applications, which could undermine the governor s climate-friendly image and damage his relationship with environmentalists.
Jesus Alonso still recalls the terrible rotten egg smell he’d whiff on his way to school in Lamont, California, immediately downwind from a large oil refinery and within a few miles of the Mountain View Oil Field. The release of toxic emissions and flammable gases from such industrial operations has beenlinked to health problems elsewhere.
“You can smell it well before you reach the school,” recounts Alonso, now an organizer with Clean Water Action. “Growing up, I thought that this was just all normal but getting used to that oil and gas smell isn’t normal. Having headaches, nosebleeds, very dry skin, high rates of asthma, all of that is not normal.”
Oil and gas producers could find themselves increasingly on the defensive in California now that two communities near the heart of the state’s largest concentration of oilfields have won inclusion under its community air protection law on Thursday.
Residents of Arvin and unincorporated Lamont, both in rural Kern County, have been organizing for three years with the goal of gaining status under Assembly Bill 617, a law intended to force California’s regional air pollution districts and Air Resources Board to share power with communities and reckon with their priorities. All members of the Board save one voted for the inclusion of Arvin and Lamont after hours of public testimony Thursday night.