California AG Filed Comments Criticizing BLM’s Flawed Environmental Review of Kern County Oil and Gas Leasing

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed comments sharply criticizing the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) draft National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) environmental assessment for its plan to lease more than 4,000 acres of public lands in Kern County, California for oil and gas development. The comments emphasized that Kern County is already home to “more than 95 percent of all federal oil and gas drilling” in California, and that much of that activity takes place near environmental justice communities already suffering from significant groundwater pollution, ozone pollution and “some of the worst particulate matter pollution in the state.” BLM’s draft assessment “lack[ed] any analysis of how this lease sale would add to the existing air and water pollution, as well as the existing public health concerns in these communities,” and severely underestimated the lease sale’s climate impacts, ignoring guidance from numerous local air quality agencies in the process. The comments also warned that BLM’s draft assessment relied heavily on the Bureau’s broader environmental impact statement for its regional resource management plan, a document that is deeply flawed and is the subject of ongoing litigation brought by AG Becerra and several state agencies.