It’s been over a decade since Richard Parks decided the multi-billion-dollar oil company operating in his neighborhood ought to be challenged.
Just half a mile from USC down Jefferson Boulevard, a drill site ran for years directly next to homes where Parks and fellow residents lived. In 2013, when the company sought to expand its operations at the site, Parks gathered some friends to spread awareness.
“As we went door to door, the stories we heard were incredible,” he said.
Neighbors told him about enduring noise pollution, petroleum odors, and personal health issues — in particular, they said, a high rate of miscarriages — due to chemicals released at the site.
“The site was a disaster,” Parks said, “and it was just a lousy neighbor.”
Today, the site is owned by a local nonprofit, which, along with a wide coalition of volunteers and community organizations, is now turning the site green.
Neighborhood drilling is a phenomenon not confined to South Los Angeles. Across the city, drill sites are mixed into the urban fabric, next to houses, businesses and parks. Over 3,000 wells still operate in the county today, while many more lie idle or plugged. Even those that are dismantled leave behind barren land.
About three years ago, the city banned new oil wells and began to phase out existing ones. Oil wells, even dormant ones, are known to emit carcinogens and greenhouse gases, posing a significant health risk to the communities near them.
But even when drill sites shut down and their wells are properly plugged, the question remains: What can be done with that land now, in a way that serves the communities around them?
The nonprofit Redeemer Community Partnership (RCP)’s answer is not to stop at ending the drilling, and to take redevelopment into the neighborhood’s own hands – instead of leaving it up to what Parks calls “drive-by” private developers.
How a neighborhood beat a multi-billion-dollar oil company
Parks said the Jefferson drill site was always destructive to his community. On top of the stories others told him, he frequently saw the area strewn with trash, with prostitution thriving in the space around it and large oil trucks breaking up the surrounding sidewalks.
When the site’s operator, Sentinel Peak Resources, sought to expand the site by drilling three new wells, RCP began advocating for the city to more closely enforce environmental regulations there. Over several years, they staged protests, marches and went to City Hall to push their demands.
“Eventually, the city said yes,” said Parks. “The oil company appealed; they lost their appeal. They went to court; we went to court with them. And in the midst of that court battle, the oil company said, ‘You know, we would rather close than comply.’”
In 2018, Sentinel Peak Resources announced that it would close operations at the Jefferson drill site. RCP then set its sights on acquiring the land and brought together residents to gauge what they would want out of a redevelopment project.
“They wanted to see a community park, affordable housing and a community center,” Parks said. “We said, ‘Wow, that’s a really big vision, but we’ll work on that.’”
RCP then needed to secure the financial resources needed to buy the property. With the help of state assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, they secured a $10 million state grant to buy the land and, separately, a $6 million grant from the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust (LANLT) to construct a park on the site.
Bz Zhang, a project manager at LANLT, said that even though the community organized to shut down the site and secure the funding to purchase it, it was “not obvious and not guaranteed” that they would succeed in acquiring it. Still, they said the community visioning process built momentum and a sense of agency among residents over what would happen next.
At the end of 2023, LANLT successfully purchased the land and began putting that vision, now known as the Jefferson Park and Affordable Housing Project, into place.
What’s happening now
Right now, the project is in its remediation phase. That means LANLT is working with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control to assess the site’s soil horizon, gauge specific development constraints and determine if any soil needs to be removed.
“Once the soil is remediated, the park can break ground really quickly, because there’s funding there for it,” Parks said.
In the meantime, RCP and LANLT have partnered with Test Plot, a nonprofit that builds restoration gardens and supports local land stewardship, to plant a plot of native plants.
On Saturday, March 14, Test Plot and the Theodore Payne Foundation hosted the most recent in a series of community planting days at the site. There, local residents and members of community organizations gathered to make progress on the garden.
The garden contains a mix of California native grasses and coastal sage scrubs that will be able to withstand the hard, compact soil, said Andre Grospe, a designer at Test Plot. An assortment of flowering plants, such as sunflowers and monkeyflowers, were also planted to add color.
Despite decades of prior drilling, initial soil tests have shown little contamination. Still, the plants are meant to loosen the soil, add nutrients and attract pollinators to the site, Grospe said.
As remediation finishes, another round of community workshops — supported in part by California’s Measure A, which provides funding for affordable housing — will take place to determine more specifics about the design of the park, housing and community center.
“That is all chosen by the community, because we want to make sure it’s used to its maximum potential,” said LANLT Program Director Mireya Valencia.
Once a design is finalized, Valencia said that LANLT will hire landscape architecture and construction firms to build the designs out. Since that’s yet to come, Valencia said it’s all the more valuable that Test Plot is able to do work on the ground right now.
“Park development takes a long time,” Valencia said. “So why not get the community out here reaping all the benefits that nature has to offer?”
While the whole project is far from over, it is making steady progress forward and has a projected open date of 2028, according to LANLT’s website.
What’s next for drill sites in Los Angeles?
Parks said that neighborhood drill sites are “going the way of the dinosaur,” so it’s important to think about how to repurpose them.
“Being part of this, I think, really gives folks a lot of hope, like, ‘Wow, we can take on this major international oil company, and we can win, and we can reshape our community to be a healthier space for our kids,’” he said.
But while RCP and its partners have done extraordinary work at this site, is it possible to expand efforts like theirs across the city?
Zhang said it is, but only with greater collaboration among nonprofits and community organizations.
“Who among us has $10 million and can take on a site, work with pro bono environmental lawyers, get the right insurance for this site and then do the administration on property taxes for the next, like, forever?” Zhang said.
Zhang said that every project of this type is bespoke, because every site and its surrounding community is different. The capacity to take on more projects can only be addressed if nonprofits work together to fill in each other’s gaps, they said.
“We’ll get it done, also, because we have to. I think that’s what makes us unafraid as this scrappy nonprofit,” Zhang said. “We’re just like, ‘It has to get done. What’s the next step?”
And, of course, none of it could happen without individuals actively investing in their communities.
“People are more powerful than we realize,” said Valencia. “It just takes a couple of us coming together to build that momentum, and magic can happen.”