"The industry’s ballot push to roll back newly enacted safety zones would delay implementation for nearly two years, until voters decide the law’s fate in 2024."
"California Gov. Gavin Newsom last month signed more than three dozen bills to protect the climate and vulnerable communities from oil drilling and fossil fuel emissions.
The historic climate package includes Senate Bill 1137, which bans new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of homes, schools and any other place people could be harmed by drilling operations. Democrats’ previous attempts to create health and safety zones around oil and gas operations failed in 2020 and 2021, blocked by just a few members of their own party.
Critically, the new law includes safeguards for the millions of Californians who live within the roughly half-mile buffer zone of existing drilling operations, tightening restrictions on everything from disruptive noise and light to the release of toxic gases from wells and storage tanks. In addition, operators must provide regulators with analyses of chemicals in any wastewater transported from existing drilling sites and, by January 2027, implement a plan to rapidly detect and fix leaks of noxious gases and the climate super-pollutant methane at these sites."
Liza Gross reports for Inside Climate News October 10, 2022.
