DPCCC membership approved the following resolution at the November 18, 2021 regular meeting.
WHEREAS, In the summer of 2019, County planners approved exploratory oil drilling on Deer Valley Road just outside of Antioch, a half-mile from Dozier-Libbey Medical High School and Kaiser Antioch, and close to several residences, despite the well-documented dangers which this drilling poses to air quality and public health, and its contribution to a rapidly accelerating climate crisis.
WHEREAS, a second permit application for oil drilling came their way in spring 2020, for a site just a few hundred feet from Brentwood homes. The planners declared there were no negative environmental impacts. It took a massive public outcry before they even agreed to perform an environmental review, now currently underway.
WHEREAS, only a year after County planners rubber-stamped that first permit—which enabled the revival of oil drilling in Contra Costa County after a thirty-year hiatus—our Board of Supervisors passed a Climate Emergency Resolution invoking the serious threats of climate change and pledging to phase out fossil fuel dependence in the county. But in the meantime, in unincorporated Antioch, those Deer Valley Road pump jacks continue to pump, despite being a mere several yards from an adjacent future senior housing development being planned by the City of Antioch.
WHEREAS, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international energy agency, recently warned that to maintain a livable planet, all fossil fuel production must end before the end of the decade.
WHEREAS, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors recently voted unanimously, on September 15, 2021, to end new permitting of oil and gas drilling and to phase out existing drilling, despite oil and gas drilling being a much larger part of their economy and having a far longer fossil fuel extraction history in Los Angeles than in Contra Costa. Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the nation, has committed to phasing out 1,600 active and inactive wells. Similarly, our neighbor to the south, Alameda County banned fracking in 2016, and in July of 2018 it revoked a conditional use permit for its operating wells, effectively banning oil drilling. And yet, Contra Costa County decision-makers and planners continue to waffle, instead talking “mitigation” instead of a clean break with the destructive extractive practices of our past.
WHEREAS, on October 26, 2021, the City of Antioch voted to ban oil drilling within their city limits. The Board of Directors of the Diablo Water District also voted, on October 27, 2021, to unanimously oppose all new (and refurbished) oil and gas well projects in East Contra Costa County; and have signed onto a currently circulating petition to ban new oil and gas drilling in Contra Costa County.
THEREFORE, Contra Costa County needs to protect the health and safety of its residents and join the ranks of those other governmental climate decision-makers to also help blaze a path into an equitable clean energy future; and include within its new revised County General Plan, (which spells out policy directives for all County rule-making, including those concerning oil and gas infrastructure), a ban on all new oil and gas drilling, and the phasing out of existing oil and gas extraction infrastructure.
THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that copies of this Resolution shall be sent to all State Senators and Assembly members representing Contra Costa County, to the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors and the director of the Contra Costa County Department of Conservation and Development.
Submitted by: Nadine Peyrucain, District 5