Community Groups Speak Out Against Kern County Oil and Gas Permitting Ordinance

Community and environmental groups are urging commission members to reject changes to a zoning ordinance that would fast-track tens of thousands of new oil and gas wells county-wide at tonight’s Planning Commission hearing. These revisions would curtail site-specific environmental review and mitigation and end any further notice to and input from the community members who live and work near future drilling sites.

“For too long, our communities in Kern County, especially in places like my hometown of Shafter, have been treated as sacrifice zones for the oil and gas industry. This ordinance is yet another example of our local government choosing to protect corporate profits over the health and safety of our families. It allows thousands of new oil wells to be fast-tracked in our communities, impacting our air quality and our water supply. We’re already living with the impacts: cancer, asthma, and polluted air, and now they want to double down on this harm. We deserve clean air, safe neighborhoods, and leaders who fight for our right to live with dignity. Our future depends on a just transition away from fossil fuels, not more drilling in our backyards,” said Anabel Marquez, Community Advocate, Shafter, California.

In a letter to Kern County’s Board of Supervisors, 74 public interest organizations challenged the county’s leadership to better protect the health and safety of local communities, improve the county’s long-term economic well-being, and promote a more sustainable future for the county’s residents and all Californians — rather than looking for ways to accelerate oil and gas development and shield it from meaningful environmental review and accountability for impacts.

“After years of community opposition and legal defeats, Kern County is now on its third attempt to fast-track oil drilling at the expense of residents’ health and safety,” said Lori Pesante, Director of Sierra Club’s Kern-Kaweah Chapter. “Kern’s Planning Commission should prioritize clean air, new job opportunities in the renewable energy sector, and protecting the public from dangerous leaks and spills — not double down on a failed approach that would give the oil industry a free pass to pollute our neighborhoods.”

Kern County has prepared a Second Supplemental Recirculated Environmental Impact Report (SSREIR) in support of the proposed ordinance, the county’s third attempt to update its oil and gas permitting ordinance. Multiple rulings by California courts found the county’s previous attempts violated the law.

“Californians are still recovering from the Los Angeles fires supercharged by climate change, but Kern County officials want to pour more fuel on the flames,” said Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “It’s appalling that Kern County is ready to greenlight tens of thousands of new oil and gas wells right as we brace for another summer of extreme heat and storms. More fossil fuels will only make future climate disasters worse in Kern County and everywhere else.”