Rep. Katie Porter’s first in-person town hall of 2023 was all about the environment.
The event came a few months after local watchdog group Climate Action Campaign found that Orange County is the largest county by population in California that hasn’t committed to a comprehensive climate action plan.
Furthermore, the level of concern for climate change is among the lowest in Orange County compared to other major regions, according to a July statewide survey on the environment by the Public Policy Institute of California.
But the 90 or so people who packed the spacious meeting room at the Norma Hertzog Community Center in Costa Mesa Thursday evening, Aug. 3, appeared motivated to address climate change, posing sharp questions to Porter during the hour-long town hall.
Among the crowd was Irvine resident Colleen McCarty, a rising senior majoring in environmental and urban studies at the University of Wisconsin.
“Just like everyone else in my generation, I can feel the effects of climate change more and it’s definitely a lot of eco-anxiety,” said McCarty. “But I also work in the clean energy industry so I wanted to hear how legislative efforts are actually working out in our communities.”
Porter said oversight is essential to ensuring legislation is working in communities, “closing the gap between what the law says versus what happens on the ground.”
Porter, who sits on the House Committees on Natural Resources and Oversight and Accountability, pointed to federal plans to revise the Bureau of Land Management’s oil and gas leasing regulations to raise the amount companies are mandated to pay in cleanup costs after drilling is done. The regulations need to be updated, she said, but work needs to be done to ensure taxpayers aren’t “on the hook” for most of these cleanup costs.
She also says legislators should go out to sites to see firsthand what is happening.
“You can’t do effective oversight from the dais,” she…
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