BAKERSFIELD, Calif.— More than 175,000 comments from people across California and beyond were submitted Friday to the Bureau of Land Management, demanding that the agency change its decision to expand oil and gas development on public lands across Northern and Central California. If finalized, the BLM’s draft environmental impact statements and plan approvals would open up leasing on over 1 million acres of federal public lands and subsurface mineral estate.
The actions would run afoul of a slew of federal laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
The agency’s proposed plan for its Bakersfield Field Office relies on an environmental review that is nearly 15 years old and largely out of date. Likewise, the Central Coast plan relies on an oil and gas development forecast that is more than a decade old. Since then significant new data has emerged regarding the serious impacts of oil and gas drilling, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley where most of the drilling is targeted and where air and water pollution are already among the worst in the country.
This includes a growing body of research demonstrating the major public health harms associated with proximity to drilling activity. The climate crisis has also continued to accelerate and worsen poor air quality and water scarcity in the region. Clean energy has reduced fossil fuel demand across the state, and California has adopted major laws and policies to reduce harm from drilling and transition off fossil fuels, including creating 3,200-foot health protection zones around sensitive receptors like homes, schools, and hospitals. The state has also banned the dangerous practice of fracking.
Advocates are also concerned about proposed drilling near valued public spaces like Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite National Parks; Carrizo Plain National Monument; the Los Padres, Sierra and Sequoia National Forests; and state and county parks and beaches.
This is the third attempt by the BLM over the past decade to expand oil and gas drilling in the agency’s Bakersfield region, which encompasses more than 1 million acres of precious public lands and natural resources. The BLM also tried to lease public lands in Monterey and Fresno Counties for drilling in 2011, and it attempted to open over 700,000 acres throughout the Central Coast region in 2019. However, litigation by a coalition of public health, environmental, conservation, community, and business groups has successfully halted each of the agency’s prior attempts.
Earthjustice submitted technical comments to the Bakersfield Office on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Central California Environmental Justice Network, Los Padres ForestWatch, National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, CalWild, Environmental Defense Center, Friends of the Earth, and Natural Resources Defense Council. The Center for Biological Diversity also submitted technical comments to the Central Coast Office. Additionally, 113 organizations signed on to a letter to the BLM strongly opposing this expansion.
In addition to the nearly 200,000 public comments collected in opposition to expanded oil and gas drilling on California public lands, more than 300,000 comments have also been made to the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management in opposition to conducting oil and gas lease sales off the Northern, Central, and Southern California coast. Collectively Californians are voicing widespread opposition to this administration’s fossil fuel agenda.
Members of the Last Chance Alliance and allies said the following:
“Lands, waters, natural relatives, and all beings are over-extracted and exploited by the fossil fuel based economy. The gas and oil industry is a colonial tool that causes irreversible harm to the environment and perpetuates displacement of all peoples and natural relatives, and the only way we can protect our communities is through collective solidarity. We need to protect Yokut, Kawaiisu, Kitanemuk, Chumash, Salinan, Miwok, Mono, Tübatulabal, Tataviam, Tongva, Paiute and Ohlone Homelands from drilling, and all homelands that are at risk from the extractive industry.” —Starry Insixiengmay, Ending Extractive Industries in Our Homelands project director, Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples
“Our public health and our public lands are inextricably linked. Californians already breathe in some of the worst air pollution in the country. BLM’s oil and gas drilling expansion proposal will spew more pollution into our air, making our children and our families sick — in the interest of destroying our beautiful public lands for the benefit of private corporations — this is wrong for too many reasons to allow it to move forward.” —Dr. Ashley McClure, Climate Health Now
"Public comments make it clear: People want their public lands protected for future generations and used to combat the climate crisis — not accelerate it. Yet time and again, the Trump administration sides with corporate polluters over working people and local communities. It’s time to move beyond policies that enrich polluters while worsening the climate crisis and undermining the outdoor recreation economies, clean water, and healthy landscapes that communities depend on.” —Mary Lunetta, conservation campaign strategist, Sierra Club
“Trump aims to turn some of the Golden State’s pristine public lands over to Big Oil, but Californians are fighting back. We’ve seen oil companies foul our beaches, kill our wildlife, and pollute our air and water. Trump wants this reckless industry to frack and drill every last drop of oil out of our state, and there’s still no plan to avoid making taxpayers pay to clean up the dangerous wells left behind. But we won’t let a bunch of profit-hungry polluters rip us off, poison us, and destroy the wild places that make California special.” —Cooper Kass, staff attorney, Center for Biological Diversity
“The energy mantra of the United States government seems to be ‘We must be more reliant on a finite resource that is incredibly bad for everybody, and not reliant on an infinite resource that doesn’t do anybody any harm ever.’” —Juan Pablo Galván Martínez, senior land use manager, Save Mount Diablo
“Environmental impact statements are supposed to be more than paperwork and rubber stamps. This plan puts some of the central coast’s most treasured public lands, beaches, communities, and drinking-water sources at risk, and it completely ignores direct conflicts with state law. The BLM should go back to the drawing board. The public deserves better.” —Benjamin Pitterle, director of advocacy, Los Padres ForestWatch
“Health professionals stand firmly in defense of our patients and communities whose health is threatened from the planned expansion of oil drilling in our fragile public lands and waters. Now is the time for all of us to quickly end the production and use of fossil fuels that gravely pollute our web of life and propel the wars that increasingly threaten our global community with annihilation.” —Dr. Robert M. Gould, president, San Francisco Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility
“We are not surprised to see the Trump administration choose corporate interests over the voices of Californians demanding an end to drilling operations polluting our air, contaminating our water, and destroying our climate. As unprecedented climate change driven extreme weather sweeps the country, with major snowstorms in the east and a heat dome in the west, it is imperative that we ramp down new drilling instead of giving away our precious public lands to industry.” —Nicole Ghio, California director, Food & Water Watch
“California’s communities and ecosystems deserve a future powered by clean, sustainable energy — not toxic extraction along the San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast that has put our communities at risk time and again. History, inadequate environmental review, and bad actors in the energy extraction industry show a coordinated attempt to expand the sacrifice zones created by redlining and a lack of respect for Mother Nature. GreenLatinos and our partners are committed to seeing this process through and fighting for the future we all deserve.” —Pedro Hernández, California state program director, GreenLatinos
