Community Members Protest the Arrival of Trucks Carrying
Toxic Acids for Extreme Oil Drilling Near Their Homes
South Los Angeles--Today, residents staged a call in. This morning, tanker trucks full of corrosive acid will roll into a residential neighborhood in South L.A. Oil company Freeport McMoRan Oil and Gas (FMOG) regularly uses acids and toxic chemicals to extract oil from wells located just 60 feet from the nearest home, plaguing residents with noxious fumes, loud noises, heavy truck traffic, and the persistent risk of catastrophic accidents.
When FMOG announced Monday morning that they would be conducting yet another acid operation, local residents decided they had had enough. This notification is only available on an obscure, 54-character website on the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) website. There was no local notification that the trucks were arriving. In fact, there has never been local notification whenever FMOG conducts activity at the site involving thousands of gallons of toxic, corrosive chemicals.
Tomorrow, residents will be gathering at the site to take a stand against neighborhood drilling by communally phoning in odor complaints to the AQMD. The AQMD has a stringent set of rules and protocol that places the onus of identifying public nuisance facilities on the community. They require 6 residents from 6 different households to call in a complaint and verify the complaint on-site with an inspector hours later before an odor mitigation plan will be implemented. Residents have shared that after calling in a complaint AQMD inspectors have taken up to 7 hours to respond, often they do not bring monitoring equipment, and they always call the drill site to warn them that they are on their way. Tomorrow, residents will dispute FMOG’s claims that drilling operations have no impact on the surrounding community by providing first-hand accounts of the many ways the site has threatened their health, safety, and quality of life of their families.
Residents also plan to protest AQMD’s refusal to require local notification when oil companies bring tens of thousands of gallons of toxic acid into our community. AQMD refused to include local notification in its recent update to Rule 1148.2 on public notification. As a result families are unable to move their children out of harm’s way or even to close bedroom windows.
WHAT: Community members who are negatively impacted by the operations at the Jefferson Drill site will meet along the sidewalk on the Budlong Ave side of the Jefferson Drill Site, near the address 3029 Budlong Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90007. Redeemer Community Partnership is a part of the Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling Los Angeles (STAND-LA) coalition, which is dedicated to safeguarding the well-being, health and safety of Angelenos living and working in close proximity to oil drilling sites.
When FMOG announced Monday morning that they would be conducting yet another acid operation, local residents decided they had had enough. This notification is only available on an obscure, 54-character website on the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) website. There was no local notification that the trucks were arriving. In fact, there has never been local notification whenever FMOG conducts activity at the site involving thousands of gallons of toxic, corrosive chemicals.
Tomorrow, residents will be gathering at the site to take a stand against neighborhood drilling by communally phoning in odor complaints to the AQMD. The AQMD has a stringent set of rules and protocol that places the onus of identifying public nuisance facilities on the community. They require 6 residents from 6 different households to call in a complaint and verify the complaint on-site with an inspector hours later before an odor mitigation plan will be implemented. Residents have shared that after calling in a complaint AQMD inspectors have taken up to 7 hours to respond, often they do not bring monitoring equipment, and they always call the drill site to warn them that they are on their way. Tomorrow, residents will dispute FMOG’s claims that drilling operations have no impact on the surrounding community by providing first-hand accounts of the many ways the site has threatened their health, safety, and quality of life of their families.
Residents also plan to protest AQMD’s refusal to require local notification when oil companies bring tens of thousands of gallons of toxic acid into our community. AQMD refused to include local notification in its recent update to Rule 1148.2 on public notification. As a result families are unable to move their children out of harm’s way or even to close bedroom windows.
WHAT: Community members who are negatively impacted by the operations at the Jefferson Drill site will meet along the sidewalk on the Budlong Ave side of the Jefferson Drill Site, near the address 3029 Budlong Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90007. Redeemer Community Partnership is a part of the Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling Los Angeles (STAND-LA) coalition, which is dedicated to safeguarding the well-being, health and safety of Angelenos living and working in close proximity to oil drilling sites.