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California’s efforts to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions have earned it a reputation as a climate leader. Most of the state’s actions, however, have focused on the “demand-side” of carbon emissions: reducing energy consumption, increasing efficiency, using cleaner fuels and energy sources, and reducing vehicle miles traveled. However, as the country’s 5 th largest oil producer (recently falling from 3 rd), the state has never done enough to keep polluting fossil fuels from being produced in the first place.

It’s been exactly a year since Zinke inexplicably rode a horse to his first day of work as Secretary of the Interior – and it’s been a great year for the oil and gas industry, but a bad year for public lands, clean air protections, and government accountability.

If you’re not looking for anything you’ll never find it. This has held true when it comes to contamination from oil and gas production in California for the last century. But the era of regulators ignoring the industry’s groundwater impacts needs to end.

Assembly Bill 1882, introduced by Assemblymember Das Williams, takes an important step by requiring water regulators to monitor our precious aquifers for pollution caused by the oil and gas injection wells.

The bill, supported by Clean Water Action and many others (here's a letter of support signed by some of California's best-known