In September 2018, Estela Escoto sat down with a team of lawyers and community organizers and weighed her options.
Escoto's town—Arvin, California—had just granted an oil-drilling and well-servicing company, Petro-Lud, a permit to drill four new wells near a neighborhood densely packed with young families and a park where children played soccer.
Escoto, president of an environmental justice group called the Committee for a Better Arvin, was frustrated, but not surprised. For years, she and the committee had been struggling to keep oil and gas development out of their neighborhoods.
The lawyers advised Escoto and Salvador Partida, vice president of the group, that they could file a lawsuit but that it would be an uphill battle.
"They asked us what we wanted to do," Escoto said, speaking through a Spanish interpreter.
She told the lawyers, "Regardless of whether the chance of winning is 1% or 100%, we want to keep fighting against this."
In Arvin, a small, agricultural town at the southern tip of the San Joaquin Valley, pollution is a pervasive part of life. Pesticides sprayed on industrial-scale farms, fumes drifting from the region's ubiquitous oil and gas wells, exhaust from the trucks barrelling down Interstate 5—it all gets trapped in the valley, creating a thick haze. This year the American Lung Association ranked Bakersfield, just 15 miles northwest of Arvin, as the worst metropolitan area in the US in terms of annual particle pollution.
Arvin's residents, like people in many other parts of California, are especially concerned by the oil and gas wells sprinkled throughout their community. These wells, sometimes drilled and operated in close proximity to neighborhoods, schools, and health care centers, release a toxic mix of hydrogen sulfide, benzene, xylene, hexane and formaldehyde into the air.
Studies have linked living near oil and gas extraction to a wide range of adverse health effects, including increased risk of asthma, respiratory illnesses, preterm birth, low birthweight and cancer—serious fears for the more than 2 million Californians who live within a quarter-mile of operational oil and gas wells.
Creating a setback distance between oil and gas operations and places where people live, researchers have found, reduces the risks. Yet, in California, the industry operates under a patchwork of regulations, with no statewide rule on setbacks—a regulatory gap that is rare among the nation's top oil-producing states.
California is a paradox; though widely regarded as one of the most environmentally conscious states, the oil industry wields considerable power here and has consistently attempted to thwart new regulations, including public health protections. During the current legislative session, the Western States Petroleum Association and Chevron have been the two top lobbying groups in the state, spending $9.9 million and $7.5 million, respectively.
But, in Arvin, a small group of mostly low-income, Latino residents is going against the grain, taking on the big oil companies in a David-vs.-Goliath fight to protect the environment and their health. Their struggle is unusual in Kern County, where pumpjacks sucking heavy crude from the parched floor of the San Joaquin Valley stretch for miles. Here, in one of the poorest parts of the state, oil means big money: The county extracts 70% of the oil and 78% of the gas produced in California.
Fresh off several local victories, Escoto and the Committee for a Better Arvin have united with other frontline community groups—including many in Los Angeles, a hub for urban drilling—to press California to create a setback rule for the entire state.
In a test of whether grassroots action can really reshape California's close relationship with the oil and gas industry, the coalition is urging state lawmakers to vote for a proposed law on setbacks that is now pending in Sacramento. Their slogan: "No drilling where we are living."