Maricruz Ramirez, a community organizer with the Center for Race, Poverty, and Environment, spoke about how the oil industry in Kern County impacts the environment and how the community can come together to combat the impacts.
Q: How does oil production in Kern County impact air quality, groundwater, or soil conditions?
A: There’s a lot of ways that, yeah, the oil industry impacts the environment here when it comes to land, air, water, wildlife, human health, just like the mere extraction and transportation of oil and gas itself causes a methane gas to be released into the atmosphere and that is a big source of air pollution, which is why, you know, year after year after year, Kern County always seems to have the number one, air pollution problem in the whole United States, it’s because of that. So that’s one way that we are affected and, that pollution, unfortunately causes the people living here to have so many negative health effects you know, when it comes to respiratory issues, there’s so many, I think there was a, yeah, there was a study that I read about just air pollution in the entire United States and how it’s responsible for, I think over 400,000 asthma attacks and over 2000 new cases of asthma every year…