Wilmington

In January 2023, together with environmental justice allies from across Los Angeles, CBE successfully pushed both the City and the County of LA to each adopt historic ordinances that would gradually phase out oil drilling in LA. However, legal challenges from the oil industry mean the fight is not over. We are now pushing the City and the County of LA to readopt their ordinances in order to protect the health and safety of community members with oil drilling in their neighborhoods.

We won historic policy for frontline communities across California. In September 2022, Senate Bill 1137 was signed into law establishing a 3,200-foot buffer zone between new oil and gas wells and sensitive receptors. Big Oil challenged the law and introduced a referendum to overturn it. This delayed implementation for 18 months until June 2024, when Big Oil withdrew the ballot item in defeat. Now, we’re ensuring implementation while fighting back against lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of our landmark environmental justice policy.

CBE has been organizing around the Warren drill site, located at North Banning Blvd and East Anaheim Street, since the site’s massive expansion in 2006 to become one of the largest oil drilling sites in the City of LA with over 200 active oil wells. During that time, the site plagues Wilmington residents just across the street with permit violations, constant air pollution, and a shocking pipe rupture in 2024 that sprayed oil and contaminated water across East Anaheim Street. We continue to campaign for Warren’s compliance with LA City permitting laws and the site’s eventual closure through our work in the Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling – Los Angeles Coalition (STAND-LA).

CBE is fighting the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s plans to retrofit this gas-burning power plant (one of the Department’s four gas power plants located in the Los Angeles Basin) to burn a blend of methane and hydrogen. On April 7, 2025, CBE in coordination with our allies submitted extensive comments that called many of the findings and assumptions of the Scattergood Draft Environmental Impact Report into question.

The Phillips 66 refineries in Wilmington and Carson are closing. They must pay to safely decommission and fully remediate their toxic sites in addition to funding a robust worker transition. We will not allow Big Oil to shakedown California and foot the bill to taxpayers to clean up their mess. As California transitions away from dirty fossil fuels, we will hold our elected officials accountable to safeguard climate policy and not allow Big Oil to receive bail outs while they price gouge consumers at the pump.

This lawsuit follows CBE’s efforts to get a ban on Hydrogen Fluoride at the Wilmington and Torrance refineries in the 20-teens that ultimately was unsuccessful at the local air district regulatory level.

As one of the steering members of Los Angeles for Resilient and Healthy Homes Coalitions, our goal is to is to have a home that no longer puts families’ health and neighborhoods at risk of harm by pollutants, bringing forth beneficial health impacts while simultaneously lowering greenhouse gas emissions from various appliances in homes. A key resilience aspect is to keep tenants housed and to pass electrification policy.

CBE works to build a more resilient community in Wilmington as its members are at the forefront of the climate crisis. That means a community with the resources to rebound from disasters such as economic recessions, earthquakes, or climate emergencies, like heat waves and worsening wildfires.