Residents Harmed by Oil Drilling May Soon Receive Reparations Under New California Law
This story originally appeared on Capital B and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
As a child in the 1950s and ’60s, Regina Martin became so used to the oil pumpjacks near her home that she assumed every child lived beside them. Everyone was made “sick to [their] tummy” by the sulfurous, rotten-egg smell that never seemed to leave, she thought.
Only until she was grown did she begin to see a possible connection between growing up on top of the nation’s largest urban oil drilling field and her own sickness and the asthma that affected her sister.
For over a century in Los Angeles and across the nation, Black people have been disproportionately likely to live near oil wells, the machinery that draws oil from deep underground. The pollution from these drilling sites are connected to birth complications, child development issues, respiratory illnesses, and cancer.
Now, a new...
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