The Brief

California air regulators on Friday approved a contentious overhaul of the state’s carbon market, creating a program that could steer billions of dollars in free pollution permits to oil refineries and other major polluters over the objections of environmental groups, key lawmakers and three of the board’s own members.

Ten members of the California Air Resources Board voted to adopt the changes to its cap-and-invest program after two days of lengthy hearings, including a full day dedicated to hundreds of public comments.

The overhaul followed intensive lobbying by the oil industry as well as pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration to help keep refineries operating in the state amid rising gas prices.

The approval sets up a potential budget fight in Sacramento. The Legislative Analyst’s Office projects that quarterly auction revenue for state climate programs will drop from roughly $4 billion a year to about $2 billion under the new overhaul.

Such a shortfall would effectively zero out programs lawmakers spent last year fighting to fund: affordable housing, public transit, drinking water in low-income communities and pollution monitoring in California’s most polluted neighborhoods.

The governor’s office praised the measure as a compromise that balanced economic uncertainty with the state’s climate goals. Refinery closures and the Iran-Israel war have driven average California gas prices above $6 a gallon.

Newsom, in a statement, used the moment to draw a contrast with President Donald Trump.

“While Trump sows ongoing chaos and uncertainty, California is staying focused by protecting our economy, safeguarding public health, and doubling down on the clean energy future all Californians deserve,” he said.

Environmentalists warned the changes to the program amount to a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry that weakens California’s only program setting a firm cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

Katelyn Roedner Sutter, California senior director for the Environmental Defense Fund, called the decision “deeply misguided” for prioritizing polluters over communities.

“Newsom’s air regulators are handing billions to oil executives at the expense of our climate, health, and affordability for working families in a rushed process that has shortchanged meaningful public participation,” said Bahram Fazeli, policy director at Communities for a Better Environment.

How the program works — and what changes

California’s 13-year-old carbon market forces major polluters to buy permits while the state lowers the overall cap each year. Friday’s vote will reduce those permits – and creates a new subsidy program carved out of the market.

The program, which may still see changes, could make available a new pool of free pollution permits available to industry valued at as much as $4 billion. Companies that pledge to invest in clean energy and efficiency may qualify for the permits in exchange for investments in clean energy.

The pool will be capped at 118.3 million permits — the same number the air board has said must come off the market for California to hit its 2030 climate target. Environmentalists say the proposal risks wiping out those reductions.

Half are reserved for the fossil fuel sector. A recent Berkeley analysis, by the chair of an independent committee that oversees the carbon market, found refineries could end up with more free permits than they need to cover their emissions.

The air board has defended the design. Officials say the credits will go only to companies undertaking decarbonization projects, will be limited and temporary and can be clawed back if companies misuse them. The plan, they say, is meant to keep California refineries operating at a time of mounting closures and global market pressure. According to air regulators, the amended program will spur clean-energy investment as Trump cuts federal support.

Genaro and Catalina Ventura moved to the South L.A. neighborhood of Jefferson Park more than 25 years ago. The Craftsman-style house they found was a dream — spacious, with a yard where they could garden and their children and dog could play.

What they didn’t know before moving in was that just a few hundred yards behind the house is an active oil drilling site.

Genaro Ventura, a now-retired custodian for the city of L.A., worked nights. When he’d come home around 2 a.m., the smell of oil and chemicals was often strong in the air.

“Since the night is quiet, there’s no traffic or smog,” Genaro Ventura told LAist in Spanish. “You can really smell the air from the drill site, and it’s a terrible odor.”

[“Como la noche es calmada, pues no hay tráfico, no hay smog, y puede uno pues percibir el aire del drill site, y es un olor muy feo."]

Five years after the family moved in, Genaro was diagnosed with cancer in his left kidney and had to have it removed. In 2013, a brain tumor led to another surgery, and the following year another brain tumor required radiation treatment. He has to return regularly for scans. Most recently he’s developed lung cancer and is scheduled to start chemotherapy.

With no family history of cancer, the Venturas suspect the illnesses are related to air pollution from the nearby drill site.

And it’s not just Genaro Ventura. The family’s last dog died of cancer. Their elderly chihuahua now has cancer, too. Two of Catalina Ventura’s friends nearby were also diagnosed with cancer and recently moved away. Their son and many children in the neighborhood grew up with asthma.

“I’d like to leave here,” Catalina Ventura said in Spanish. “But we can’t — this is our home and we like the area, plus we don't have the money to move, so we’ve stayed here despite everything we’ve gone through.”

[“Yo me quisiera ir de aqui. Pero no podemos porque estamos aquí, es nuestra casa y nos gusta el área, pero tampoco tenemos dinero para movernos, así que seguimos aquí a pesar de lo que sufrimos.”]

Now, after more than a decade of community organizing, the drill site could be shut down. The city has scheduled a hearing this week to consider revoking E&B Natural Resource’s license to operate the site.

The Murphy Drill Site in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.

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Sarah Craig

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Faces of Fracking

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“It is really the  best chance we have ever had to see this toxic industrial site shut down and removed from our neighborhood,” longtime South L.A. resident Richard Parks said at a recent community town hall at a church down the road from the drill site. Parks is the president of the nonprofit Redeemer Community Partnership, a group that has spearheaded the shutdown effort.

In response to questions from LAist, a spokesperson for E&B emphasized the company’s compliance with regulations and said the facility “plays an important role in supplying locally produced petroleum to the Los Angeles Basin.”

The spokesperson also pointed to a July report the company commissioned from environmental consulting firm Roux Associates. The report says “the administrative record contains no scientific evidence that the Murphy site jeopardizes or adversely affects public health or safety of nearby residents or workers.”

Daniel Murphy's home was a sprawling estate on West Adams Boulevard in the early 20th century.

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Courtesy L.A. Public Library

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Why an oil drilling site is in the middle of a neighborhood 

What’s known as the Murphy drill site on West Adams Boulevard sits atop the vast Las Cienegas oil field.

The site’s name comes from Daniel Murphy, a business tycoon who lived on an estate there in the early 20th century.

Murphy, who made his money in cement, oil and railroads, was also a devout Roman Catholic, so after his death, his family donated the property to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. For decades, the Archdiocese has leased the property to various oil companies. Most recently, the site has been operated by E&B Natural Resources.

In a statement, the Archdiocese told LAist it "has no direct control over the facility" and that "the health and well-being of the community remain a priority." It added that the Church understands E&B has complied with regulations "and has taken efforts to address the concerns of the community."

Although oil wells are present throughout Los Angeles, the effects are largely unequal. Through the mid-20th century, racist housing laws and discriminatory lending practices relegated people of color to certain neighborhoods.

Jefferson Park was one of those redlined neighborhoods and remains home to mostly Black and Latino residents.

A 2022 study found twice the number of oil and gas wells in historically redlined neighborhoods, with L.A. topping the list.

A Google maps screenshot of the Murphy drill site, owned by E & B Natural Resources, in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of L.A.

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Google Maps

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How much oil is produced at the Murphy drill site? 

Since 2018, Oildale, California-based E&B Natural Resources has operated the Murphy drill site.

Production of crude oil at the site peaked in 1973 at about 1,588 barrels per day, and of natural gas in 1981 at about 533 barrels, according to a 2024 amortization study commissioned by the city.

Ever since, production has declined. In 2022, E&B extracted some 251 barrels per day of oil and 21 barrels of natural gas from the Murphy site — a relatively small amount by oil production standards. All oil drilling within L.A. city limits now makes up less than 2% of the state’s oil.

In a statement to LAist, a spokesperson for E&B said the site remains valuable.

“Maintaining responsible local production also helps meet regional energy needs with resources produced close to where they are ultimately consumed,” the company spokesperson wrote.

Where oil and gas comes from in California.

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Courtesy CJM Petroleum Consulting Inc.

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The health effects of living near oil drilling

Today, it’s easy to miss the Murphy drill site. A mass of piping and oil wells is hidden behind a wall and manicured hedges, and next door to low-income apartments, an AIDS Healthcare Foundation clinic and an education center for children with hearing loss. A church, library, elementary school and high school are also nearby.

At the convent directly behind the site, Roman Catholic nuns are tasked with caring for the sick who call for them.

On a recent afternoon, Sister Claudia  of the Servants of Mary told LAist in Spanish that dark soot often covers the roof and walls of the building.

“A black dust settles even on the leaves of the trees and gets into the house," she said.

[“Un polvo negro que se queda hasta en las hojas de los árboles y entra a la casa."]

Many of the sisters have allergies they never had before living there, she said, and two of the sisters have cancer.

Sister Claudia, left, and Sister Maria de Jesus of the Servants of Mary convent in Jefferson Park.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Since at least 2014, the site has been the cause of dozens of complaints to local air quality regulators. People who live or work nearby have reported strong oil and chemical odors, noise and other concerns, according to records obtained by local nonprofit Redeemer Community Partnership and shared with LAist.

For more than a decade, the group and its partners have organized to gain more protections on the site and, ultimately, shut the drilling down.

They’ve gathered the experiences of nearby residents, many of whom have suffered multiple miscarriages, respiratory illness and cancer. Numerous studies have found that people living near oil wells, which have been found to leak carcinogens like benzene, are more likely to have higher rates of asthma, preterm births and cancer.

But such research is not enough to shut a site down, and it’s hard to prove exactly where those illnesses come from. So over the last decade, academic researchers have partnered with the community to try to do just that.

“The burden is often placed on the community to prove they're being harmed,” said Jill Johnston, an environmental health researcher at U.C. Irvine and previously USC, where she led the oil drilling research. “ We're trying to establish some of this data-driven evidence to support the observations that people have experienced for decades.”

The researchers and community members installed air monitors near Murphy and another nearby drill site. They found that the closer to the site people lived, the more likely they were to have reduced lung function.

“The amount of reduction we see is similar to what you would experience from living with a smoker,” Johnston said.

E&B disputes the findings, arguing that it did not measure "actual site emissions or exposure and cannot establish causation."

In another study, the researchers partnered with the community to collect hundreds of toenail clippings to measure toxic metals associated with oil drilling. They compared them to clippings from people not near drill sites.

“The closer you live to an oil drilling site, the more production it has, the more nickel and manganese that you have in your body,” Johnson said, explaining the study’s findings at a recent town hall ahead of the Thursday hearing.

Too much of such metals in the body can lead to a variety of symptoms, including respiratory and nervous system issues. At high exposure levels, nickel has been linked to an increased risk of cancer.

Signs in various languages warn of the potential for dangerous gas at the Murphy drill site.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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The Murphy drill site is in a neighborhood with a convent, homes and schools.

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Isabel Avila

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How to shut down a drill site

The organizing paid off. In 2023, the community won a hearing from the city to consider adding new regulations to protect public health. Those new rules would extend protections currently in use in wealthier, whiter parts of L.A. They included enclosing the site and using electric equipment instead of diesel where possible. E&B’s permit also limits operations to between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

But after an appeal from E&B, the city rolled many requirements back. For example, the site no longer is required to use electric equipment — E&B recently started burning more gas for electricity on site.

The site is also still not enclosed, despite the three-year-old mandate from the city. Neighbors say they have on multiple occasions seen, heard or smelled operations outside of the allowed hours.

“ They know the rules, but they choose not to follow them,” Parks said.

In a statement to LAist, a spokesperson for E&B said the enclosing of the site has been delayed due to complex permitting requirements from the city and that the company “is awaiting action by the city on the necessary approvals.”

In recent years, under E&B’s purview, the Murphy site has logged dozens of violations from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the state and the L.A. Fire Department, according to public records obtained by Redeemer Community Partnership and shared with LAist, as well as publicly available data.

Since 2019, some of the most concerning violations have been for at least four methane leaks greater than 50,000 parts per million — the explosive level of the gas. In January last year, an inspector identified a leak at 209,000 parts per million, four times that limit.

Outside of L.A., the state recently fined the company more than $1 million for violations at a site in Bakersfield, which the company has appealed.

Now, the city is considering revoking E&B’s permit to operate the site. City Councilmember Heather Hutt, who represents the area, called for a hearing after being presented with the evidence from local residents.

“The city and the community’s attempts to regulate and mitigate this site over the decades has failed,” Hutt wrote in a letter to the city’s zoning administrator ahead of the Thursday hearing. “I am calling for the zoning administrator to revoke this use and continue to reset the balance between community needs and corporate laxity in urban Los Angeles.”

Neighbors of the Murphy drill site have been fighting to get it shut down for years. They held a town hall July 18.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Signs and slogans were common at the July 18 town hall. Others read "Save South L.A." and "End neighborhood drilling."

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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What’s next

During the city’s hearing to consider revoking E&B’s permit the zoning administrator will hear testimony from residents, who can sign up and submit their comments during the meeting or ahead of time. Meanwhile, E&B plans to present its rebuttal to city staff’s latest report on compliance at the site and other concerns.

At the town hall, Parks discussed another drill site, a little over a mile away, called the Jefferson site.

He and other local residents successfully campaigned to get that site shut down, too. The oil company that owned the property eventually decided to sell instead of facing litigation and the cost of carrying out practices to better protect public health. In 2023, Parks and his group secured grants to purchase the property, where they plan to build a park and permanently affordable housing.

“Bit by bit, an amazing transformation is taking place,” Parks said at the recent town hall. “We are receiving beauty for ashes. … If we show up and we share our stories, if we call for environmental justice, if we call for care for our common home, we are well-positioned to build something beautiful and enduring for our community.”

Catalina and Genaro Molina at home.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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After the town hall, Catalina and Genaro Ventura returned home and sat outside on their porch. They said they hope this is a turning point to better protect future generations.

“I hope the city becomes aware and does something for the people, for the animals, for the children, for the elderly. For everyone, for everyone,” Catalina Ventura said in a Spanish.

[“Y pues que la ciudad tome conciencia y haga algo por la gente, por los animales, por los niños, por los ancianos. Por todos, por todos."]

When Gov. Gavin Newsom, using his executive power, refused to extradite a physician accused of prescribing and mailing abortion pills to a Louisiana woman, he said California would “not ever” allow “extremist politicians” to punish its doctors.

Newsom, who is considering a run for president, has long championed reproductive rights, but state lawmakers in the Democratically controlled California Legislature know future governors might not have the same political beliefs.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host endorsed by President Donald Trump, has vowed to honor these types of extradition requests from other states if he’s elected, saying that Louisiana “is trying to uphold what its people voted for, and California is undermining it.” His opponent, Democrat Xavier Becerra, has said he would deny the requests.

Legislation advancing in Sacramento is the latest chapter in a tit for tat that’s been happening between conservative and liberal states since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending federal legal protections for abortion.

A bill by state Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, which is being heard in committee, would take some decisions out of the governor’s hands, requiring governors to deny extradition requests for healthcare providers who prescribe abortion medication or administer gender-affirming care. It would also shield anyone in California who helped patients travel to California or another state to receive legal care.

While opponents cast “shield laws” as an incursion on other states’ authority, supporters of the bill view it as insurance — even with Becerra leading Hilton 52% to 31%, according to May polling by the University of California-Berkeley Institute of Government Studies.

Newsom spokesperson Marissa Saldivar said the governor doesn’t comment on pending legislation. Hilton and Becerra didn’t return calls for comment.

“Protecting providers from prosecution should not rely on shifting political winds or a single person’s decision,” said Alyssa Sherer, a nurse practitioner who spoke in support of the bill at a Senate committee hearing in June. Sherer is also the medical director at Hey Jane, a telehealth medication abortion provider.

Thirteen states have banned abortion outright, and 28 other states ban abortion somewhere between six weeks and viability. At the same time, other states that allow abortion have enacted shield laws to protect doctors and nurses from liability when they prescribe across state lines.

People living in states with total abortion bans are increasingly getting abortion pills prescribed via telehealth, from 74,000 abortions in 2024 to 92,000 abortions in 2025, according to the Guttmacher Institute, citing numbers from its Monthly Abortion Provision Study.

Critics of shield laws say that states have a legitimate interest in enforcing their own statutes and that such laws represent an attempt by some states, like California, to nullify the legal decisions of others.

“If California says, ‘We’re not going to honor any other state’s laws. We’re going to ship abortion pills into your states. You can’t have a law that says abortion is illegal,’ I don’t know — that doesn’t seem like a workable situation,” said Greg Burt, who is vice president of the California Family Council and has spoken in opposition to shield laws at the State Capitol.

Twenty-one other states and Washington, D.C., have similar shield laws, but Arizona, California, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania rely on an executive order, which could be reversed by a successor, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Amanda Barrow, a senior staff attorney at the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy at UCLA Law, said passing extradition protections would put California on firmer footing, because an executive order “could be revoked by a governor who is anti-abortion or anti-gender-affirming-care.”

Hilton has said he would do just that if elected.

“Just as I wouldn’t want to see Louisiana coming in and undermining something that we voted for here in California,” the GOP candidate told KQED in January.

During a May gubernatorial debate, Becerra said he was strident about protecting reproductive rights as the state’s attorney general.

“Absolutely no,” Becerra said of allowing California physicians to be extradited.

This year, Hawai‘i added gender-affirming care to its existing shield laws. And Oregon expanded extradition protections, including banning law enforcement from cooperating with out-of-state or federal investigations into care that’s legal in the state.

But Republican legislators in conservative states have cast telehealth visits as an end run around their laws. And some have moved to restrict abortion pill access.

The governors of Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Dakota have signed bills this year that criminalize the sale, purchase or distribution of medication that induces an abortion. Those states make it a felony to provide medication abortion drugs to people who are seeking to end a pregnancy. The laws impose up to 10 years in prison with potentially tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

Mississippi amended the state’s controlled substances code to add abortion pills as a criminal category. Although the state already prohibits abortion broadly, the measure specifically addresses distribution, which could subject out-of-state providers to prosecution.

In January, Louisiana tried to extradite a California doctor, Remy Coeytaux, accused of mailing abortion pills to a patient. Newsom denied the request. Likewise, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul denied Louisiana’s February 2025 extradition request for a doctor in her state.

Texas has taken a slightly different legal tact. Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate, obtained a default judgment of more than $100,000 against the New York doctor targeted by Louisiana, but a judge dismissed it, citing New York’s shield law.

Neither Paxton nor Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill responded to requests for comment.

Fear of being charged with a crime for providing quality medical care is contributing to physicians leaving medicine, said Sacramento emergency room doctor Kamara Graham, who is vice president of the California chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which is supporting the bill.

“It’s really conflicting and hard for us to weigh that concern of: Will I get extradited and charged and potentially be taken away from my family? Or do I do the right thing for my patient?” Graham said.

The availability of medication used in most abortions could soon change nationwide. Under the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Food and Drug Administration recently confirmed it is conducting a safety review of mifepristone, one of two medications in pill form that is used in most U.S. abortions. The FDA maintains the drug is safe and effective.

If the FDA were to decide that mifepristone is not safe, such a ruling would supersede state laws, even in states where abortion is legal. If mifepristone is restricted, many telehealth groups have said they would switch to using only the other medication, misoprostol.

“The elephant in the room is whether the Trump administration, particularly after the midterms, makes some kind of move to put national limits on access to abortions,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at UC-Davis who has written several books on reproductive health law.

“Not everything is something that the legislature can solve for,” Ziegler said, “because there's some uncertainty about how the federal courts are going to react to all of this.”

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

What do Ukrainian food, soft serve and Thai fusion tacos have in common? They’re all served out of trucks built from scratch in an industrial building on Anaheim Street next to the Los Angeles River.

“This is where food trucks are born,” said Martin Ramirez, owner of California Food Trucks.

Over the past 15 years, he’s quietly had a hand in the success of some beloved local businesses and major corporations. He’s built custom projects for the Long Beach dessert shop SnoCorner and Peruvian food truck Mikhuna, along with major 30- and 40-foot catering trucks for high-profile clients like Google and Monster Energy.

Ramirez, his shop manager Cody Madole, and four other employees are a one-stop shop for everything a food truck needs, including plumbing, welding and electrical work to transform vans and commercial trucks into functioning mobile kitchens.

It’s a niche manufacturing business that caters to enterprising chefs and restaurateurs who are testing a concept or hitting the road for music festivals, farmers markets or a meal break at offices.

The food truck industry has grown as the costs to start a brick-and-mortar restaurant have steadily increased. In a business that’s notorious for having razor-thin profit margins, a truck is a safer bet — and one you can also resell if things don’t work out, Ramirez said.

Martin Ramirez, who owns California Food Trucks, at his workspace in Long Beach, where he builds food trucks in Long Beach on July 14, 2026.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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Ramirez, who grew up in Bellflower, found his way to food truck manufacturing through his stepmother. In the late 2000s, she discovered how lucrative the business could be when she bought a truck to start selling tacos in Miami. Before she sold her first taco, she decided to list the truck on Craigslist to test the resale market. Within a few days, a buyer offered her double what she had paid for it, Ramirez said.

After some coaxing from family, Ramirez realized he was perfectly equipped to create mobile kitchens from scratch.

He had spent more than a decade remodeling homes as a general contractor and also had experience in metal fabrication from a job building race cars. Food truck manufacturing was like a blend of the two, Ramirez said. 

For years after he started building trucks, Ramirez and his cousin also ran a taco truck called LA Tacos and Co. 

He’s no longer involved in that business but runs a pizza truck with Avalou’s Italian Pizza founder and Long Beach resident Louis Lombardi. 

The two met through a mutual friend, Lombardi said. Ramirez loved the pizza and offered to build a truck to make the pop-up concept mobile.

“We hit it off, and we’ve been great buddies since,” Lombardi said.

Starting next week, the pair plan to sell pizzas for delivery through UberEats from the truck parked outside Ramirez’s California Food Trucks business.

Working in food truck businesses has given Ramirez first-hand knowledge of how to efficiently lay out a mobile kitchen and set up new food vendors for success before they even pick up a knife.

Ashley Monconduit, owner of SnoCorner near Long Beach Poly High School, ordered a custom food cart from Ramirez in 2024. Her brick-and-mortar business specializes in New Orleans-style shaved ice, called Snoballs, but Monconduit was looking for a cart to serve beignets and soft serve at corporate events and birthday parties.

Ramirez made the cart “based entirely on what was in my head” and even made the soft serve machine removable, Monconduit said. That’s been a big help for events where she only serves beignets because the soft serve machine accounts for a significant portion of the cart’s weight.

Martin Ramirez, owner of California Food Trucks, shows the solar power and battery technology on his latest food truck, which he built in Long Beach on July 14, 2026.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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Ramirez also tries to stay ahead of the curve on innovations in the food truck industry. He now steers clients away from using generators in favor of solar-powered batteries. Ramirez knows from experience that if you use a generator, “it will break down at the worst time.”

With most of the batteries he installs, he can troubleshoot problems from his desk no matter where a truck is.

But he still makes his fair share of on-site repairs for drivers who accidentally sheared off a side mirror or rooftop exhaust fan in their scramble to make it to an event.

Not all the repairs are a drag: He’s built out several trucks for clients in Hawaii. Ramirez, an avid surfer, makes a point to visit those trucks whenever his schedule allows.