I grew up 30 feet from an oil well. We couldn’t open the windows of our South LA home because of what was in the air. I couldn’t play outside for more than a few minutes without getting sick.

At the age of 9 I started organizing to stop the drilling that was making me, my mother, my sister and our community sick. I helped start a grassroots campaign called People Not Pozos, Spanish for wells. More than a decade later, it’s a campaign that I and others are continuing across California as the drilling for toxins continues in our midst.

When I was about 11 I was diagnosed with asthma. By the time I turned 19, we had stopped drilling in our South LA neighborhood, but not before I was diagnosed with stage 2 reproductive cancer. I lost my ability to bear children as a result.

After three operations, eight minor procedures, three chemotherapy and six weeks of radiation, I was cancer-free two years ago, at the age of twenty.

My experience, as well as that of others living in oil-drained neighborhoods, is a constant reminder that those in power do not value our health and well-being. It is a signal that some communities are expendable, that our lives don’t matter as much as the profits of the fossil fuel industry.

Last year, the California legislature and government. Gavin Newsom finally took action to protect people in communities like mine. They enacted Senate Bill 1137, drafted by Senator Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), which prohibits new oil exploration within 1,000 yards of a home, school, or community. But the oil industry responded by spending tens of millions of dollars to qualify for a ballot referendum that puts the law on hold until voters can decide on the issue in November 2024.

Meanwhile, drilling continues, putting more people at risk.

It’s time for the legislature to move on. A bill before the first committee hearing Tuesday would help hold oil drillers legally responsible for the harm they cause by drilling so close to people. SB 556, also from Gonzalez, would presumably hold oil drillers liable for illnesses related to their activities within the misadventure zone.

Scientific evidence cited in the dossier in support of the setback legislation shows that living near oil and gas production increases the risk of asthma, other respiratory problems, premature birth, high-risk pregnancies and cancer.

Stanford researchers found in a 2020 study that pregnant women who lived near oil wells in the San Joaquin Valley were up to 14% more likely to experience spontaneous preterm birth, the leading cause of infant death, and the effects were the most pronounced among Latina and black women. A 2021 review of studies by World Health Organization researchers found that people who live near oil and gas wells are exposed to harmful pollution and are at greater risk of developing several types of cancer. And a Geological Energy Management Department in California

(CalGEM)

scientific advisory panel concluded in the same year with high certainty that living near oil and gas extraction is associated with adverse perinatal and respiratory consequences.

SB 556 would help Californians who develop such conditions hold oil drillers accountable if they have lived within 3,200 feet of the extraction and companies have not used the best available technologies to protect them. Fossil fuel drillers operating within the misfortune zones would be fined $250,000 to $1 million in addition to damages if they cannot prove that they have taken measures to reduce pollution or that something else caused the condition.

The legislation would essentially shift the burden of proof from communities to polluters. If oil drillers choose to continue to ignore the scientific evidence that they are sickening surrounding communities, they risk significant legal and financial penalties.

Protecting ourselves with laws like SB 556 is the job we elected legislators to do. All Californians have the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live in a healthy environment. But those with the fewest resources and political power are likely to suffer most from pollution and climate change.

In the Los Angeles Basin alone, 1.7 million people live within a mile of an active oil or gas well, more than 200,000

live

within 2500 feet and more than 32,000 within 328 feet.

Oil drillers claim that limiting crude oil production will raise California’s already high gasoline prices. But economists say states gas prices have nothing to do with local production levels.

We cannot continue to prioritize corporate profits over the health and well-being of Californians. The struggle to introduce people

pozos

keeps existing.

Nalleli Cobo is an advocate for environmental justice and the winner of the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize for North America.