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When Dominic Gibbs’ family moved to the Harbor City neighborhood of Los Angeles in the 1990s, the young child had a lingering question for his mother: What is that massive 20-foot-tall pump next to our house?

“I always think about when I first saw the pump, because I thought it was just something that happened in that movie, ‘The Beverly Hillbillies,’” Gibbs remembered, referencing a 1960s TV show and 1993 film about a poor rural family that moves to the upscale California city after oil was discovered on their property.

In fact, the bobbing heads of oil pump jacks can be seen in the midst of many residential neighborhoods across America’s second-largest city. They tower near parks where children play and along the sides of busy streets. Contrary to Gibbs’ childhood belief and popular understanding, LA is home to the largest urban network of oil and gas production in the U.S.

But that will soon change. In a unanimous decision this month, the Los Angeles City Council voted to ban the creation of any new oil wells and phase out all oil drilling over the next 20 years. The move comes on the heels of a city ban on gas stoves in new residential and commercial buildings and a state law that requires all vehicles sold in California to be electric by 2035. The changes are an effort to accelerate the country’s shift toward clean energy, a commitment that will come at the expense of a massive source of revenue.

From an environmental and health perspective, the shift will disproportionately benefit Black and Latino Angelenos. Across the city, there are more than 5,000 oil and gas wells, and predominantly Black and Latino communities are home to a higher concentration of them compared to majority-white areas. The Gibbs’ family home, located in a neighborhood that has a Black population four times larger than the city’s average, sits on top of the third-largest oil field in the U.S.

A 2022 study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that the disparities in communities of color are not coincidental. Formerly redlined communities, created to enforce segregation and relegate Black residents to cities’ undesirable areas, are home to roughly twice as many oil and gas drilling sites as non-redlined, predominantly white communities.

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The practice continues to disproportionately harm Black residents in other places, such as Kansas City, Missouri, and some cities with large Black populations, like Akron and Youngstown, Ohio, are even poised to expand the practice.

More than 1 million Black Americans are exposed to the invisible forms of pollution from oil drilling, including noise, air, and water pollution. Living near oil and gas drilling sites has been linked to higher rates of cancer, heart disease, severe respiratory illnesses, and depression. It also contributes to a significant health impact affecting Black communities: maternal health. Proximity to oil and gas wells is linked to birth complications, including preterm births, neural tube defects, and adverse reproductive outcomes, such as increased maternal mortality rates.

The decision to ban the long-standing practice is largely due to more than 25 years of community organizing, including a decade-long campaign from the STAND L.A. coalition, a collection of seven LA-based, Black and Latino-led environmental justice organizations.

The state’s oil industry, which has lobbied against the move for years, claims the action will erase a $250 million industry in LA, while negatively impacting 8,000 jobs associated with oil extraction and leaving the state more dependent on imported foreign oil. In October, the California Independent Petroleum Association, representing more than 300 oil and gas companies, wrote a letter to the LA City Council disputing claims of “detrimental health effects” from oil and gas drilling and production operations.

The City Council and community organizers, pointing to multiple studies showing the impacts of oil drilling on human health and the environment, have also highlighted analyses that show a national clean energy transition would create millions of jobs.

Many questions about the city’s ban remain unanswered, however, including detailed timelines of each drilling site’s closure, how land ownership rights will be handled, and, most notably for residents, how oil companies will ensure the proper capping of oil wells.

There are more than 3 million capped and idled oil wells in the U.S., which are collectively responsible for emitting 281,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere every year, a 2020 Reuters investigation found. More than 25% of California’s methane emissions come from leaking oil wells, a 2019 study found. Methane — the second-largest contributor to climate change — warms the planet by 86 times as much as carbon dioxide.

Last week, Capital B traveled through LA’s Black neighborhoods that are home to oil drilling to speak to residents about their experiences living next to oil wells, their expectations for the phasing-out process, and what they want to see replace these sites in the future.

Victoria Richardson, a resident of LA’s Harbor Gateway North neighborhood

Victoria Richardson’s intimate relationship with oil drilling began in 1997 when she moved to her home in LA’s Harbor Gateway North neighborhood, which is 45% Black. The oil well operating next door became quite a nuisance. At one point, heaps of oil poured over her yard from the drill site, ruining her furniture. Richardson says she was compensated for the damages, but some of the more unscrupulous impacts from the site are hard to put a dollar figure on.

“At the beginning, there were a lot of rats that infested my home from the oil field,” she told Capital B as the oil pump dipped up and down beside her home.

“The other major problem was the noise,” she said. “I’ve gotten accustomed to it now, but I still don’t open my windows at times because it’s so loud and the smell can be potent.”

As Richardson has learned about the impacts of oil drilling on human health, she has begun connecting the dots to her own life. Richardson, who has heart murmurs, and her husband regularly experience lightheadedness when the operator removes oil from the site.

“Living here, there are things that you just don’t think about, so it becomes normal, but it’s really not,” she said, referring to her neighborhood’s high concentration of oil wells. “It’s an impact every day, though, when you think about it.”

Looking toward the future, Richardson hopes that the city creates community meetings for residents so they can remain updated on the phasing-out process, with an emphasis on safeguarding current residents from any increased pollution if oil companies attempt to ramp up production before they’re forced to close wells for good. Once the oil wells are closed, she wouldn’t oppose developers building new homes on the land because of the city’s housing and homelessness issues.

Dominic Gibbs, a resident of LA’s Harbor City neighborhood

As a child, Dominic Gibbs’ neighborhood was defined by oil, he said. He lives in LA’s harbor area, home to the highest concentration of oil refineries west of Texas and the largest port in North America. Behind his home are railroad tracks that carry dozens of trains to and from the port every week, including oil trains.

At one point, there were more than 60 active oil wells in the half-square-mile community. Today, there are roughly two dozen, as oil pumps in the neighborhood have slowly been capped and idled over the last five years. Roughly two years ago, the oil well beside his home was decommissioned, opening up a number of plans for his family.

Gibbs said they have dreamed about buying the land around the idled oil well to extend the property for extended family. He would also love to see a community park for the neighborhood’s children or apartments to help tackle the area’s homelessness problems. “I feel like we deserve something here for all of us,” he said. “Something for the greater good.”

Like Richardson, Gibbs is especially concerned about the potential impacts of leaks on his community throughout the phasing-out process. An investigation by the FracTracker Alliance, an environmental organization, found that two idled oil wells in his neighborhood were leaking methane in August.

“We live here, and we’re so impacted, so we deserve to be included, especially if there was an instance where methane or something was leaking into the air that could be problematic for us.”

When the Permanente Health Plan was made available to West Coast members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in 1950, it was a classic example of “be careful what you wish for.”

The Permanente plan, robustly serving workers and families for Henry J. Kaiser’s home front industries, expanded to the public on July 21, 1945, less than a month before the end of World War II. It was a heady and challenging period, and labor unions were to become major group members of the postwar Permanente. Why? Because, for the first time, unions could negotiate health coverage.

The key legal ruling was the 1948 decision by the Seventh Circuit United States Court of Appeals in the case of Inland Steel Company vs the National Labor Relations Board. This precedent affirmed the legal obligation of employers in unionized companies to include health and welfare benefits as part of labor negotiations.

In 1950 The International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association requested the Permanente Health Plan provide care for all 22,500 of their workers up and down the West Coast; The ILWU became the first major group enrolled in the Health Plan.

At the insistence of ILWU leader Harry Bridges, Permanente was the only choice for the union members. This exclusivity violated Permanente policy that membership should be voluntary, which understandably caused some dissatisfaction with ILWU members. It wasn’t until 1954 that ILWU members were offered a choice of a second plan after Permanente consultant and economist Avram Yedidia convinced Bridges of the importance of dual choice; only 10 percent would leave Permanente.

But there was a problem with capacity. Bridges brought in thousands of new members to a plan that was recovering from a postwar slump and had limited facilities.

For the major ports of Oakland and San Francisco, where the Permanente hospital and clinics were already established, that wasn’t a problem. Looking north, ILWU members in Seattle got care through an agreement with the Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound and other providers while Portland-Vancouver union members were served by Northern Permanente. Southern California would involve an estimated membership of more than 11,000 longshoremen, but the only Permanente hospital was at the Fontana Steel Mill, 60 miles from the ocean. Not exactly longshore territory.

Bridges wanted a Permanente facility in the San Pedro harbor area where there was a high concentration of members. His promise convinced Permanente that this is the time and the place to expand. Enter the Harbor City Hospital, proud pioneer of the Los Angeles South Bay service area.

Temporary facilities began immediately. A history compiled for the 60 th anniversary of the South Bay area described the first San Pedro clinic:

Dr. Ray Kay (founder of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group) and Medical Director Dr. Ira “Buck” Wallin found a working clinic at 599 W. Ninth St. (and Grand Avenue) already occupied by doctors who were, at first, willing to share space. They even agreed to help take care of the longshoremen after hours. That arrangement was short-lived, however. Spooked by the economic threat posed by group practice, the doctors in the community gave the cold shoulder to Wallin’s staff and anyone who associated with them professionally or socially. The 3 fee-for-service doctors with offices in the shared clinic buckled under the pressure and vacated the premises.

Permanente promised the ILWU that they would build a new hospital in the Wilmington-San Pedro area, but progress was slow. The new Kaiser Foundation Hospital in downtown Los Angeles broke ground in late 1951, and drew institutional resources away from the Harbor City facility.

Things came to a head when 5,000 cannery workers in the San Pedro area signed up with the Permanente plan at the end of 1953. The workers’ employers had wanted them to sign up with the California Physicians’ Service, a competing prepaid plan offered through the California Medical Association. This was during the period where the medical establishment disapproved of Permanente physicians, who were barred from facilities such as San Pedro Community Hospital. The ILWU had been waiting more than 2 years for their promised hospital, and were getting cranky.

1953 was also the year the scrappy Permanente clinic in Pittsburg, Calif., opened to serve the labor unions and local community.

By early 1955 a site had been purchased, a complex deal involving 3 parcels, each held by different owners. Clarence Mayhew, the most prominent architect of Kaiser Foundation hospitals, drew up plans for a bold and innovative 66-bed hospital. It featured “vast amounts of glass,” separate corridors for staff and the public, and the famous “baby-in-a-drawer.” The groundbreaking ceremony November 4, 1955, included elected officials, leaders of the ILWU, and the PMA.

On January 14, 1957, the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Harbor City at 1100 West Pacific Coast Highway, opened. It was hectic. At a 30-year celebration, Medical Administrator Pat Crowe reminisced “The day before we opened, carpenters were still making last-minute changes and final clean-up was not yet complete. Eighteen patients were admitted that afternoon and evening.” One of them was about to deliver her second child. At 1:54 a.m. on January 15 she gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

The ILWU Dispatcher newspaper of February 15 added this under “Local 13 Man Launches New Harbor Hospital”: First patient in the new $1,000,000 Kaiser Foundation Harbor Hospital was ILWU Local 13 member Oscar Roberts, covered through the ILWU-PMA Welfare Program.

As with all the Permanente facilities, demand always pushed capacity. Sixteen beds were added in late 1958, and a 2-story clinic at 1050 West Pacific Coast Highway was built in 1959. Additional expansion happened in 1964, bringing bed capacity up to 121. 1969 saw further clinic expansion. A serious fire destroyed a section of the adjacent Parkview Medical Office Building in 1973.

Harry Shragg, MD, served at Harbor City from 1957 until 1968 as a surgeon, chief of the Department of Surgery, administrator of a community health care program for indigents, and medical director. In his oral history he recounted an epiphanic moment about Permanente medicine:

I was on call in the hospital one evening, and a black girl from Compton — which is a lower socio-economic level area — came into the emergency room with abdominal pain. I think she was 16 years old. And she was seen by a board-certified pediatrician, examined by a board-certified gynecologist, and examined by me, a board-certified surgeon. We took her to the operating room — she had appendicitis — and we operated on her. And the whole sequence of that one episode, to my mind, crystalized the merits, and the value, and the philosophy of this kind of practice, where the issue of whether one could afford it or not never arose… She was just a sick person who came in and needed help, and we just gave her what I thought was outstanding quality care… That was, to me, a very dramatic and very memorable occurrence, and I think that’s what it’s all about.

Service to working communities. Yes, that’s what it’s all about.

HARBOR CITY, Calif. – Renting a U-Haul and loading it up at the foodbank of Southern California in Long Beach has become a ritual every Thursday for Tim and Tricia Tucker of the non-profit City Lights Gateway Foundation.

"You know if you want to lead the people you got to feed the people," said Tim Tucker.

Starting a food pantry in Harbor City was a long-time dream of Tricia's as she saw there was a need in their community.

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"There's nothing local nearby for them to have easy access to food-even though they have churches nearby that does it once a month, but we do it once a week," said Tricia Tucker.

They began feeding the community in October. Once the U-Haul is packed, they leave for their second pickup location at New Challenge Ministries Food Bank in Torrance. This food bank has been around since 2005 and is considered the largest in the South Bay.

Tricia met its founder Pastor John Hernandez, who helps other food pantries with donations.

"I really believe that hunger is more of a crisis than homelessness, nobody's talking about that,” said Pastor John Hernandez.

But both are big problems.

In Council District 15, where Harbor City is located, there was a 47 percent increase in homelessness in 2019. In L.A. County, an estimated 2-million people live with food insecurity.

Tricia and Tim make their way back to their home to unload with the help of volunteers. On Saturday the items will be distributed.

"You see the satisfaction of being able to fulfill somebody's family's needs even though they don't have to tell us what they need but you can see it," said Tricia Tucker.

As Saturday arrives, volunteers pack up boxes, and people start showing up. It is also a time where Tricia gets to connect with members of the community.

"This company is right here in Torrance, it's a local company, let me know how it goes," said Tricia Tucker.

They will fed nearly 50 families in a day some those shelter, and some who live on the street, but doing their part to keep their community from going hungry.

The food pantry is open every Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 1034 W. 252nd St, Harbor City, CA 90710.

Awash in soothing shades of cool pastels, the new four-story North Hospital at Kaiser Permanente in Harbor City doesn’t look much like hospitals from earlier decades.

The long-anticipated new building at Normandie Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway is set to open in February after nearly three years of construction. It will replace the old hospital building, constructed in the late 1950s, that stands next to the new tower and will come down over the next year to make room for more parking.

Spurred on by state mandates that have increased seismic standards, along with a need to upgrade technology, the new building is part of an overall campus improvement project at Kaiser Permanente South Bay that is expected to cost about $440 million. Included are new outdoor park spaces, more parking and state-of-the-art medical services.

“Our members’ expectations are changing,” Chief Operating Officer Yvonne Rockwood said during a tour of the new facilities. “They expect the one-person (private) rooms, and they expect the technology.”

The new seismic standards forced hospitals to decide whether to replace or retrofit facilities. In many cases, new construction provided the less costly option, especially when other upgrades were needed anyway.

The new hospital features an expanded 24-hour emergency room with 39 private treatment areas, 140 private patient rooms, a state-of-the-art diagnostic imaging suite (including a digital breast center), the Wave Cafe with indoor and outdoor patio seating, and “room service-style meals” for patients with food made daily by Executive Chef Mitchel Ramos, of the Fig & Olive restaurant in Los Angeles, and his team of cooks.

“Everything in this hospital — from the nurses’ stations to meal service — has been patient-centered in its design,” said Dr. Barbara Carnes, area medical director.

Built to LEED Gold environmental standards, the 280,000-square-foot complex also includes a healing garden and Wi-Fi access for patients and visitors.

Floors are rubberized to provide easier working conditions for medical staff. Nurses’ stations are less centralized, giving staff better eye contact with rooms.

Signs are bilingual and hospital officials are especially trying to spread the word that the ER entrance will now be on Pacific Coast Highway, not at the back of the campus as before.

A surf-and-ocean theme is highlighted throughout the building, with wave, sand, whale and historic images from around the Port of Los Angeles and local beaches displayed on walls and etched into glass.

Specialty services will include an intensive care unit, inpatient dialysis, respiratory services, physical therapy and a bariatric unit with a surgery center.

In addition to meeting seismic standards, the new construction will help with demand, which is expected to grow now that health insurance is mandatory.

Kaiser Permanente South Bay, which is across the street from Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park and Machado Lake, is bordered by Pacific Coast Highway, Normandie Avenue and Vermont Avenue.

It’s the latest construction project to be completed by Kaiser.

In June 2013, a new three-story Kaiser facility was opened in Carson to improve its reach to nearly 200,000 members in the South Bay, Harbor Area and Long Beach.

The 180,000-square-foot Carson building — at 18600 S. Figueroa St. where offices of Nissan North America were — features a state-of-the-art dermatology department and an occupational health wing for those with work-related injuries.

Kaiser Permanente came to the Harbor Area in 1950 to serve longshoremen and their families, who still make up a good portion of the providers’ members.

A firm opening date hasn’t been announced and there is still plenty of work ahead, including transitioning patients and staff. Overseeing that will be Sherry Bearden, who also will direct practice drills as the transition draws closer.

Head south down Vermont Avenue past Kenneth Malloy Harbor Regional Park, and you’ll soon reach a crossroads that gives you options. Lots of options.

Make a hard right onto Anaheim Street and you’ll continue through Harbor City, headed for Lomita and Torrance. Bear right more gently and Palos Verdes Drive North will take you up onto the Peninsula. Bear slightly left and you’ll find yourself on San Pedro’s main drag, Gaffey Street. Finally, a hard left sends you the other way down Anaheim toward Wilmington and Long Beach.

Welcome to Five Points, one of the South Bay/Harbor Area’s wackiest intersections.

Archaeological and historical evidence suggests that a large Native American settlement once was situated near the Five Points intersection, and that the area once was a crossing for several major trails used by coastal Shoshonean tribes.

Hopefully, they had fewer gnarly traffic crashes there than did subsequent settlers.

Because of its harbor, San Pedro was among the earliest settlements in the Harbor Area, incorporating in 1888. (It disincorporated itself and became part of the city of Los Angeles in 1909.) Other smaller settlements began cropping up north of San Pedro and south of L.A., but for several decades those areas mostly consisted of farmland.

As Los Angeles Harbor development ramped up in the early 1900s, the need for roads connecting the port and its goods to points north became obvious. Of course, it went both ways, with port workers from cities such as Torrance in need of connection to San Pedro using eastside thoroughfares, such as Western and Vermont avenues

Developing this highway infrastructure that we take for granted today took time.

The last link connecting Western Avenue from Torrance to San Pedro wasn’t finished until 1950. By contrast, the Southern Pacific freight railroad link to San Pedro came early on, in 1881. The Pacific Electric red car began bringing passengers to the port in 1904.

Anaheim Street had been established as an east-west artery between Long Beach and Wilmington in the 1880s. Vermont and Normandie were extensions of major north-south Los Angeles arteries. Palos Verdes Drive North came into the picture with the development of the Palos Verdes Peninsula during the mid-1920s.

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Anaheim St. traffic headed west passes through Five Points intersection, center, as Vermont Ave. traffic waits, left. Palos Verdes Drive North is beyond red traffic lights at right, while Gaffey St. lies beyond more distant traffic signals, center. August 2022. (Photo by Sam Gnerre)

These various planned thoroughfares didn’t start coming together in organized chaos until a series of construction projects received approval in 1929 and began in 1930. These included extending Gaffey Street from Channel Street up north to Anaheim Street and building Normandie and Vermont avenues south from 228th Street to Anaheim.

Work began on paving the Gaffey Street extension from Channel Street north to Anaheim in June 1930 and was completed that September.

North of Anaheim, the plan was for Normandie to veer east and merge into Vermont just north of Anaheim Street. But both had to be extended a considerable distance south first.

San Pedro businessman and land baron George Peck helped out on the extension northward in 1931 by deeding the right-of-way on the land he owned through which the expansion would run.

Traffic was a mess during all this construction, as one might imagine, with some sections of the roads involved, especially Anaheim, being closed for weeks at a time. But with the completion of its extension in July 1932, Vermont Avenue became the first continuous roadway connecting San Pedro to Los Angeles.

The fifth and final of the Five Points, the extension of Palos Verdes Drive North from the Peninsula eastward to link to the intersection, was approved in 1932 and completed in 1934.

It was all well and good for San Pedro to announce in 1936 the installation of a new “Welcome to San Pedro” sign at the gateway intersection. But once construction there was completed, it quickly became clear that traffic controls were what really were needed.

Crashes at the confusing intersection became commonplace.

In 1932, stop signs were installed at Gaffey and Anaheim. Improved lighting was added in 1936 to the formerly dark-at-night intersection, and there was much talk of improving safety there over the next few years.

Somehow, though, traffic signals weren’t installed until the U.S. Army demanded them in late 1943 to protect troops and defense workers trying to safely navigate the crossing. They became operational in January 1944 and seemed to help reduce crashes somewhat.

More attempts to improve the intersection came after the war.

The addition of a nearby bridge on Anaheim and new storm drains were aimed at reducing the flooding from nearby Bixby Slough that occurred at the intersection during rainy weather. Gaffey and Anaheim streets also were widened in 1946 to accommodate the heavy traffic in the area.

Improvements to the difficult traffic problems posed by the converging roadways have continued throughout the years.

The whole intersection might have been altered radically if a 1965 proposal for a coastal freeway through the South Bay had been adopted. The preferred route would have followed Anaheim Street right through the Five Points intersection. It was debated for several years, but the freeway idea was put to rest in the early 1970s.

From time to time, other proposals to improve traffic have been made. The idea of a roundabout, or traffic circle, similar to the Lakewood Boulevard roundabout in Long Beach has been tossed around for years. Detractors have said the Five Points site is too small for one and roundabouts, in general, pose unnecessarily dangerous traffic risks.

For now, Five Points remains a souped up, frequently redesigned, update of the traffic puzzle that first bedeviled traffic engineers – and drivers – in 1934.

Sources: Daily Breeze archives. Los Angeles Times archives. San Pedro: A Pictorial History, by Henry P. Silka, San Pedro Bay Historical Society, 1993. San Pedro News Pilot archives. Torrance Press Herald archives.

Note: Thanks to reader Angel Rodriguez for suggesting this topic.