the job

"I've never seen anything like this before." I heard a lot of this phrase this morning at a meeting of key members of our alliance this morning. The meeting was the steering committee of the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance (GBHA) consisting of professionals from the community with seasoned experience in government and policy: a few lawyers, policy makers, an urban planner, a UCLA researcher, and the executive director of my office.

This past week has been a whirlwind of learning and introducing myself to the office and the project at hand which, apparently, is quite appalling and unusual. The greater nonprofit that I work for is Community Health Councils http://www.chc-inc.org/ whose general mission is to increase access to quality healthcare for the underserved.

The specific project I am working on is the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance (http://www.chc-inc.org/chcRegionalLB.cfm), for which I am the "Community Laiason." This Alliance was formed by a number of community groups in the area to ensure input in the process of creating standards by which to hold the oil company in their region accountable.

First of all: YES there are oil fields in the middle of South LA. Urban oil drilling. It exists. The Baldwin Hills/Inglewood Oil Fields have been running since the 1920s but have never really been regulated or the health effects evaluated. The Alliance formed two years ago when an extremely powerful odorous gas leak occurred, causing the evacuation of several neighborhoods. A moratorium was placed on the drilling until an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and Community Standards District (CSD) could be created by the county...which two years later, they are still working on.

I guess what has been so amazing to the community leaders I met with today was how blatently the county supervisors have ignored the Alliance/community input, how they have not been following the appropriate processes for such documents, and how easy their proposed documents are on the oil company not requiring any real accountability or calling for appropriate health studies.

While some members of the Alliance want drilling to stop completely, most members are just asking for these environmental impact studies, closer monitoring of the oil company's activities and use of hazardous substances, and limiting the expansion of the drilling so as to protect the unique open space in an area that is "park poor."

Wow there is much more to be said about this...and my role in all of it. But whew! I'm tired.