OIL DRILLING AND THE LAW: THE BASIS FOR MUNICIPAL AUTHORITY Freeport-McMoRan oil operations tower over the surrounding neighborhood at the Jefferson Drill Site.
Adrian Martinez, Attorney, Earthjustice Yana Garcia, Staff Attorney, Communities for a Better Environment Angela Johnson Meszaros, General Counsel, Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles
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he Los Angeles Oil Code applies to all districts where the drilling of oil wells or production from wells of oil, gases, or other hydrocarbon substances is permitted (Los Angeles City Municipal Code). The Los Angeles Oil Code’s primary concerns are to advance the interests of oil and gas producers, rather than promote public health and environmental protection. Importantly, these laws were last significantly updated in the 1950s, which predated many of California’s landmark laws aimed at protecting residents from environmental harms, including the California Environmental Quality Act and the Porter Cologne Water Quality Control Act. Moreover, it predated passage of bedrock federal environmental laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.
the current regulatory scheme suffers from several flaws, but most importantly the following: • From the start, the laws and regulatory oversight processes established to address oil and gas activity were not envisioned as a way to protect residents or the environment; • As Los Angeles became more dense, the city failed to address gaps in the existing regulatory system, and it failed to create a framework for reviewing earlier decisions to allow or place conditions on oil extraction activities; • The systems for collecting and making publicly accessible existing information about oil extraction activities are inadequate because the most critical information is incomplete and reporting is not timely.
Recent evidence about the real and important impacts on residents and the environment from oil and gas development make this a good time to revisit the code to make sure it addresses the full ambit of local needs, including protecting the health and welfare of those living next to current and future oil and gas operations. In crafting these policy prescriptions,
All three of these flaws can be addressed through revisions to the municipal code. 26
