TOWARD A HEALTHY AND SUSTAINABLE LOS ANGELES A panoramic view looking towards downtown Los Angeles.
Michele Prichard, Director, Common Agenda, Liberty Hill
I
t is clear from the communities profiled here that expanded oil extraction operations—the first step in a long chain of oil production, transport, refining, and burning with documented deleterious health hazards at every stage—require urgent and decisive action by policy makers.
The following section, while not exhaustive, highlights potential policy options that could provide greater public health and safety protections, more effective agency oversight, and a more accountable and open public process around current land use, permitting, and zoning practices concerning oil development. Here we distinguish between two major approaches: a “preventive” approach represents a fundamental shift to protecting public health by eliminating known hazards; a “mitigation” approach, on the other hand, seeks to reduce (but not eliminate) health hazards.
Regulators and lawmakers at the municipal, regional, state, and national levels all have a critical role to play in protecting the health and safety of residents. Yet, the involvement of so many different actors is one of the key challenges that have frustrated residents’ efforts to get answers as oil-drilling operations expand and incorporate more hazardous techniques alongside conventional practices. As the community stories told here demonstrate, local residents often do not know to whom to turn for relief and response. Frequently, they have been shuffled between multiple offices in frustrating attempts to find the responsible agency.
POLICY OPTIONS TO PROMOTE PREVENTION Mounting scientific and public health evidence indicates that the toxic chemicals and related air emissions that accompany oil development—in both its conventional and enhanced forms—are hazardous to human health. Eliminating exposures to these hazardous chemicals is a primary prevention, providing the broadest, population-level health protections, especially for vulnerable populations with heightened sensitivity to such exposures, including children, pregnant women, the elderly, those suffering from chronic health problems, and low-income communities of color who
There is a wide range of policy, zoning, regulatory, and enforcement tools to be considered by the many different agencies that have some jurisdiction and legal authority over oil operations in Los Angeles. Even a recent report by the L.A. Department of City Planning notes that “there is significant room for improvement in the way the City currently regulates and administers oil and gas activity” (Los Angeles Department of City Planning 2014). 28
