Joint Oversight Hearing on the Orange County Oil Spill

I participated, alongside several of my colleagues, in a Joint Oversight Hearing on the Orange County Oil Spill today in Costa Mesa in Orange County. We discussed why this happened and what we can do to ensure that this doesn't happen again.

We need to shut down all offshore oil drilling to protect California's beautiful coast. The Orange County oil spill caused undue damage to our ocean, our coast, our marine life, and economy. In 2018, I authored AB 1775, which prohibits new oil leases in state waters needed to support new federal oil and gas development to fight Trump's plans for new offshore oil drilling, but we were not able to shut down existing oil leases in state waters.

Shutting down offshore drilling will prevent disasters such as the spill in Orange County, which is why we need to keep fighting to shut down each and every oil rig to continue to protect our ocean, our wildlife and our coasts from the damage of further oil spills.