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VOL. 27,
‘A setup for disaster’: California legislation requiring companies to pay for oil and gas well cleanup in limbo
Arcadia Unified named the Best School District in LA, 4th best in California
By Mark Olalde, ProPublica
By Staff
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up the industry. ProPublica’s work was repeatedly cited by the Legislature and the bill’s supporters. Despite its green reputation, California has a long history of weak oversight of its oil and gas industry, which has left behind an estimated 5,300 orphaned wells. Many are scattered across Los Angeles, complicating redevelopment. Others spew methane in Kern County’s huge oilfields. Companies have little incentive to plug wells; it’s cheaper to sell or to walk away and forfeit the small bonds currently required by the state. “It’s too easy for them right now to offload those unproductive oil wells to newer or less-resourced companies that may turn around and go bankrupt and that don’t have the adequate financial capacity to do the job of cleaning
he Arcadia Unified School District has been named the Best School District in all of Los Angeles, fourth Best School District in California, and is in the top 40 Best School Districts in the U.S., according to Niche’s newly released 2024 rankings. These rankings have also seen Arcadia Unified listed as LA County’s second best place to teach and ranked fifth among districts with the best teachers, earning an overall A+ grade and honors as an elite school district in the nation. “As a parent, resident, and school board president in Arcadia Unified, I am so grateful to see the collective and inspiring efforts of everyone from all areas of our district celebrated through this humbling distinction,” Arcadia Unified’s 2023-24 Board of Education President Shirley Yee said. After a rigorous analysis of comprehensive data sets for nearly 100 school districts in the Los Angeles area, over 500 districts in California, and almost 11,000 public school districts across the country, Niche, a prominent school and neighborhood review website, found that Arcadia Unified is continuing to make the grade, achieving an overall A+ score and A grades in the categories of academics, teachers, clubs and activities, college prep, resources and facilities, and administration. “Earning a spot at the top in rankings like this is a direct reflection of the unparalleled dedication of our educators, staff, counselors, parents, administrators, and community members, who partner with one another every day to ensure our students have access to a worldclass learning experience that places mental health and wellness at the forefront and includes ample opportunities for engagement in the arts, athletics, and activities to help create well-rounded, lifelong learners.” In addition to its detailed data analysis, Niche parses over 100 million reviews and survey responses to reach its annual rankings. “We recently started the exciting and in-depth process of creating a new Facilities Master Plan,” Arcadia Unified Superintendent Dr. David Vannasdall shared. “It’s distinctions like this that fuel the fire for this important work by reminding us that to build our future with the leaders our world needs, we need to ensure our buildings, campuses, and facilities are state-of-the-art, safe, innovative spaces that match the top-tier teaching and learning happening across every single one of our campuses. Arcadia Unified being named the best school district in the greater Los Angeles area is incredible, and then to think Arcadia Unified is one of the best school
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See Arcadia Unified Page 14
Chevron oil pump jacks drawing oil from the Lost Hills Oil Field in the San Joaquin Valley in Central California. | Photo by Richard Masoner CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED
This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
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he California Legislature recently passed a bill that would provide the state’s taxpayers some of the strongest protections in the nation against having to pay for the cleanup of orphaned oil and gas wells. But Gov. Gavin Newsom has not indicated if he will sign it. AB1167 would require companies that purchase idle or low-producing wells — those at high risk of being left to the state — to set aside enough money to cover the entire cost of cleanup. Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, a Los Angeles Democrat who authored the bill with the support of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environment California, said it’s needed to “stem the tide” of orphaned wells.
Newsom has until Oct. 14 to make a decision. A spokesperson declined to comment, saying the governor would evaluate the bill “on its merits.” The state’s Department of Finance released a two-page analysis opposing it. It costs more than $180,000 to clean up an average orphan well in California, the state told the U.S. Department of the Interior in 2021, according to documents ProPublica obtained via a public records request. This includes plugging the well with cement, removing aboveground infrastructure like pumpjacks and decontaminating the site. But bonds, which are financial instruments guaranteeing to pay for cleanup, cover only a tiny fraction of that cost. A ProPublica analysis
of state data found that oil and gas companies have set aside only about $2,400 per well. (State oil regulators are currently reevaluating companies’ bonds to increase them within existing law, which does not mandate that they cover the entire cleanup cost.) Left unplugged, many wells leak climate-warming methane, brine and toxins that were used in the drilling process. “It’s a setup for disaster,” said Ann Alexander, a Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney. The bill follows ProPublica’s reporting on the exodus of oil majors from the state’s declining industry — one sale last year saw more than 23,000 wells move from Shell and ExxonMobil to a little-known German asset management group called IKAV — and on the multibillion-dollar cost to clean