Decade-Long CEQA Battle Forces Kern County to Reckon With Oil Drilling's Cost to Farmland and Health

CEQA litigation

Rachel B. Hooper, Kevin P. Bundy, Susannah T. French, Tori B. Gibbons, Heather M. Minner, Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP; Daniel P. Selmi, Professor of Law Emeritus, Loyola Law School; Colin C. O'Brien, Earthjustice; Hollin N. Kretzmann, Center for Biological Diversity; Caroline Farrell, formerly Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, soon to be with UC Merced Community and Labor Center; Elizabeth Benson, Sierra Club; Gregory D. Dhawan-Muren, formerly Earthjustice; Ann Alexander, formerly Natural Resources Defense Council, now with Devonshire Strategies LLC

It took a decade of hard-fought litigation, including two trips to the Court of Appeal, before a coalition of ecologists and farming community groups could wield the California Environmental Quality Act to moderate the harms of a vast Kern County oil and gas drilling project.

Joining forces to challenge the county ordinance that authorized drilling permits with only cursory review were the Committee for a Better Arvin, led by environmental lawyers, and a concerned local farming entity, represented by Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP.

"It was the toughest and longest case I've been involved in," said Colin C. O'Brien of Earthjustice. Echoed Shute, Mihaly's Rachel B. Hooper, "This was the largest case of my 40-year career. We were up against three national firms."

The ordinance, backed by the petroleum industry, allowed issuance of thousands of oil and gas well permits over a region the size of Delaware with little scrutiny.

The coalition knew the stakes were high. Proximity to oil and gas drilling and production is associated with a wide range of negative health consequences, especially decreased respiratory function and adverse birth outcomes. In Kern County, as elsewhere, these burdens fall heavily on low-income communities. Moreover, the new drilling under the ordinance was projected to damage or convert thousands of acres of high-value Kern farmland and threaten local water supplies and water quality.

After a 2020 appellate win, the county reapproved its ordinance with little improvement. The coalition went back to court. "They fought us about everything, even page limits on briefs," O'Brien said.

The result: In 2024, the coalition's second appellate decision directed the county via a writ of mandate to set aside its permitting rules and prohibited it from issuing oil and gas drilling permits until it complied with CEQA. Subsequently, the county reapproved its permitting ordinance, but only after conducting additional environmental review and committing to avoid or better mitigate the adverse health, water supply, and farmland impacts of oil and gas drilling in Central Valley communities. V Lions Farming LLC v. County of Kern (2024) 100 Cal.App.5th 412.

"It took a lot of hustle on our part to enforce the writ," O'Brien said. Hooper added, "As long as it took, this was a textbook example of how CEQA improves projects. We ended up with effective mitigation over 7,000 acres that were to be destroyed. They still get to drill, but we have saved a great deal of farmland."