Nearby residents grapple with health problems
Magali Sanchez-Hall, a Wilmington resident for over two decades, has struggled with asthma her entire life. She says the health issue stems from her proximity to oil and gas drilling.
Emma Newburger | CNBC
LOS ANGELES, CALIF. — Stepping out of a coffee shop near Interstate 110 in the Wilmington neighborhood of Los Angeles, you’re immediately hit by a foul odor.
Magali Sanchez-Hall, 51, who’s lived here for more than two decades, is used to the smell of rotting eggs wafting from the hundreds of oil wells operating in the neighborhood. She’s used to her neighbors describing chronic coughs, skin rashes and cancer diagnoses, and to the asthma that affects her own family, who live only 1,500 feet from a refinery.
“When people are getting sick with cancer or having asthma, they might think it’s normal or blame genetics,” she said. “We don’t often look at the environment we’re in and think — the chemicals we’re breathing are the cause.”
Wilmington, a predominantly working-class and Latino immigrant community of more than 50,000 people, has some of the highest rates of asthma and cancer in the state, according to a report by the non-profit Communities for a Better Environment. It’s surrounded by six oil refineries and wedged in by several freeways and the ports of L.A. and Long Beach.
California, the seventh-largest oil-producing state in the U.S., has no rule or standard for the distance that active oil wells need to be from communities. For many Californians, especially Black and brown residents, acrid smells, noise and dirt from oil production is part of the neighborhood.
Walking around Wilmington, pumpjacks are visible in public parks, next to schoolyards where children play and outside of people’s windows at home. At night, the sky is lit orange from refinery flares.
The discovery of oil in the 1920s led to significant population growth in the area. People built and bought houses next to the oil fields and refineries, which employ thousands of residents in the area. In L.A. County, the industry employs about 37,000 people, according to a report by Capitol Matrix Consulting.
Oil tanks wedged between homes in the Wilmington neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Emma Newburger | CNBC
More than 2 million California residents live within 2,500 feet of an operational oil and gas well and another 5 million — 14% of the state’s population — are within 1 mile, according to an analysis by the non-profit FracTracker Alliance.
Residents are especially vulnerable in L.A. County, which is home to the Inglewood Oil Field. The 1,000-acre site is one of the largest urban oil fields in the country and is owned and operated by Sentinel Peak Resources. More than half a million people live within a quarter mile of active wells that release hazardous air pollutants like benzene, hydrogen sulfide, particulate matter and formaldehyde.
Sentinel Peak did not respond to requests for comment.
Sanchez-Hall didn’t understand the link between the nearby refineries and the health issues…