the NUANCE // a community health podcast. · Medicine Explained.

110: OIL DRILLING in our backyards: Fighting for Health & Justice in L.A. | Wendy Miranda

·38 min·2 clips

Wendy says Los Angeles has about 5,000 oil wells, many hidden in plain sight.

1. the NUANCE // a community health podcast episode 110 focuses on oil drilling in Los Angeles neighborhoods and the fight for health and justice. 2. Amanda hosts Wendy Miranda, a Wilmington community member and policy associate at Esperanza Community Housing, whose policy work connects housing, environmental justice, and health care. 3. The episode asks what community-led advocacy looks like when oil wells sit next to homes, schools, and parks in South LA and Wilmington. 4. Wendy says Esperanza Community Housing has nine affordable housing buildings in South LA, a promotores de salud program, a healthy breathing program, arts and culture programs, and Mercado La Paloma. 5. She says the policy department has two people and works on affordable housing, equitable development, environmental justice, climate justice, and immigrant rights. 6. Wendy traces South LA’s environmental burden to the 1890s oil discovery in Echo Park and to redlining that limited where low-income and BIPOC residents could live. 7. She says industries later left contaminated sites behind, while lower land values in South LA made it easier for corporations to buy property and push displacement. 8. Wendy explains that she got involved through an internship at Communities for a Better Environment and through the Stand LA Coalition. 9. She names coalition partners including Physicians for Social Responsibility LA, Black Women for Wellness, Scope Strategic Concepts and Organizing and Policy Education, Redeemer Community Partnership, and Holman United Methodist Church. 10. She says her public health and urban planning background drew her to Esperanza’s mission to bridge housing justice and environmental justice. 11. Wendy says common impacts near oil drilling include asthma, wheezing, shortness of breath, eye and throat irritation, miscarriages, and cancer. 12. She says some neighbors never smoked and had no family cancer history, which makes the reported health patterns especially concerning. 13. Wendy defines Stand LA as a racial and environmental justice coalition working to eliminate neighborhood oil drilling and uphold a human right to health and safety. 14. She says Los Angeles has about 5,000 oil wells and that the industry hides them with fences, camouflage, and locations that blend into neighborhoods. 15. She gives the Allen Co. Drill site near USC and the Wilmington site by the Boys and Girls Club as examples of wells residents may pass without noticing. 16. Wendy says the city passed an ordinance in 2022 to end oil drilling, but five companies sued and a 2024 case outcome overturned the rule. 17. She says the coalition now wants to readopt the ordinance and points to Culver City as a nearby city that declared oil drilling a nonconforming land use. 18. Wendy says former drill sites should have timely cleanup, a residential standard, and community engagement before redevelopment decisions are made. 19. The conversation is conversational and policy-focused, with Amanda pressing for examples and Wendy answering in practical terms about advocacy, trust, and local organizing. 20. People interested in environmental justice, housing policy, and South LA organizing will get the most from this episode; listeners wanting light lifestyle chat may skip it.

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