Board of Supervisors — 2022-03-08

Thank you.

Good morning. Welcome. I will call to order the March 8, 2022 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors here in the Santa Maria hearing room. Madam clerk, will you please call the roll?

public comment is closed, we will be posting the list of all public comments so members of the public know where they fall in that list. Online on the along with all items related to that item today. So again, we'll be posting that list online as well as in both hearing rooms so members of the public know where they fall on that list. I would like to remind the public that the Board of Supervisors meetings are being interpreted and broadcast live in Spanish. We are broadcasting our meetings in Spanish, both for Cox Cable subscribers in South County as well as Comcast cable subscribers in North County members of the public can now view our meetings in Spanish by turning on the secondary audio programming.

Also known as SAP, or S-A-P under their language settings. The information is currently being provided through the TV scroll. Lastly I would like to remind the public who are participating in our meeting today of the board's updated methods of public participation for the Board of Supervisors methods of public participation and to provide public comment on general public comment or an item on the board's agenda please see page two of the agenda Members of the public can attend meetings in person, both in the Santa Barbara Board Hearing Room Chambers as well as the Santa Maria Board Hearing Room Chambers.

Please note the board is following all local and state guidelines and we are no longer requiring face coverings indoors If you attend the meeting in person, you will no longer be required to wear face covering. But please be advised that the Public Health Department is still strongly encouraging all county staff and members of the public to mask and socially distance themselves in crowded areas.

I would also like to remind the public that if you require any special accommodations, please contact the Clerk of the Board to make that request preferably on the Friday prior to the board meeting. Individuals that would like to provide verbal public comment virtually may do so via Zoom by registering in advance via the link available on page two. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing important information about joining the virtual meeting.

Once the chair has announced the item you want to comment on please join the meeting with the information provided and the registration confirmation email. You'll be placed on mute until it is your turn to speak. The clerk will call you by name. When removed from mute, you will hear a notification that your line has been unmuted and if you're using a touchtone phone, you may need to press star six to unmute yourself again. If you're using a touchtone phone, you may need to press star six to unmute yourself.

Each person may address the board for up to three minutes and this is at the discretion of the chair. If you have any questions please contact the clerk of the board at 805-568-2240 568-2240. That concludes my announcements for this morning.

Thank you, Madam Clerk and I would just like to add that it looks like we have under 80 public speakers for item D3 if we get more than that so we're planning a minute and a half 90 seconds per speaker if we get more than 80 speakers then we will cut it back to a minute So with that, turning to our administrative agenda. Do board members have any items they would like to pull? I have Supervisor Nelson A3 and Supervisor Williams A8.

And are there any others that board members would like? And Madam Clerk the public A9.

Yes thank you Chair Hartman and members of the Board we have requests this week on Administrative Item Number 8 and Administrative Item Number 9

Thank you. So would you read a three into the record, madam?

And my apologies we do actually have an additional request to speak on a free from the public. Chair Hartman and members of the board administrative item number three is from the county executive office. It is to consider recommendations regarding the circumstances of the existing state of emergency. And we have one request to speak from the public on this item, and that is via Zoom for Dr. Amy Smith.

So the public goes first and Supervisor Nelson will follow.

Good morning. Thanks for having this on the agenda. I think it's a very, very important item. I think declaring a state of emergency is a very important decision And this is kind of a new territory and I believe it is related to the state level law. I think it was 262 that was passed in October of 2019, how local health agencies would work with the State Health Department and how a pandemic would be handled is connected in emergencies into that law. And here suddenly after that we had an experience where Addressed or used and it's just been very, very concerning to me since the very first day we were asked to stay home to flatten the curve.

Whether abuses of rights and overstep and emergency was being used to have other agendas attended to and I'm not accusing anyone here in particular of being up to anything but the way as we can see right now with the war the way the media Pushes a one-sided narrative, it doesn't have that debate and discussion. It demonizes opponents or people who have different view or different experience or looking at a different part of an issue. And so it's very kind of chilling the way the media has become very lockstep in pushing one way of thinking of things. And so that coupled with actually suspending rights due to an emergency is a very concerning thing in a country that strives to be a democracy And so it's a very serious issue. And I know you're just one small part and you didn't ask for any of this, but I hope you take this very seriously and consider what level of disease we need to have in order to justify changing the nature of rights in our locale and imposing things on people, imposing vaccinations on people for their job which this body has done that is a very I do know that there's the testing option and that's much better than others were offered.

And I do appreciate that, but this is a very serious thing when a very narrow way of doing things is mandated and discussion is not welcomed, hearings weren't held and we really need to have an accounting of what rises to the level of an emergency. Right now we're dealing with something on par with the flu and even at the beginning it was arguably on par with a bad flu Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting And the health order that recommends that for other organizations in our county. That is something that you can do to make sure going forward, we have a healthier democracy. I thank you very much for listening.

Thank you and Madam Clerk we have additional public speaker, and so I will close the queue for public comment at this time.

Yes thank you Chair Hartman and members of the board we do have an additional request to speak on administrative item number three and just as an additional announcement as I stated this morning for all those members of the public that are here for departmental item number three It would be very helpful for the clerk if you log out of zoom, it is very congested now with a large number of you and I am unable to see our administrative and general public comment. Since that item is not until the noon hour if you can please just follow along either online or on your TV, CSB TV channel 20 local channel 24 Cox and Comcast. If you have any questions on how to do that, please call the clerk of the board's office. That number is on page two of the agenda.

You can please log out of zoom now that would be greatly appreciated.

We will now go to Maria Kestner Good morning, Board of Supervisors.

I am going to make a little statement and I think my statement is for the public because our politicians and our governmental representatives are not listening to us. According to the California Emergency Service Act, the ESA section 8558B, a stage of emergency can only be called if the threat Overwhelms the current resources of the state. Furthermore, the state of emergency has to be terminated at the earliest possible date.

The orders and regulations shall be in writing and take effect immediately on issuance. The temporary suspension any statute ordinance regulation or rule shall remain in effect until the order or regulation is rescinded by the governor The governor proclaims the termination of the

state

of emergency or for a period of 60 days, whichever occurs first. Let me repeat it. The temporary suspension of any statute ordinance regulation on rules shall remain in effect until the order of regulation is rescinded by the governor. The governor proclaims the termination of the state of emergency before a period Today's, whichever occurs first. What we are witnessing here is a total power grab by government Newsome and whoever are the powers behind him. The lobbyists military industrial complex. The pharmaceutical industry is part of a huge part of the military industrial complex They're making huge private profits. They're spending money, billions of dollars on masks and products that don't work and then they want to prevent the public to use products that can be preventative and have been supported by some of the top physicians in the medical field.

And I just think the public needs to wake up. You are just continuously being bamboozled by propaganda You hear about COVID 24-7 on every media outlet, every social media outlet, every TV station, every radio station. And you are just being groomed to not think for yourself and it's time that we vote if we are indeed a nation that's ruled by the people for the people when we need to hold our Thank you very much. Thank you, Miss Kessner

And that concludes our public and Supervisor Nielsen.

Yes, thank you Chair Hartman. I'm going to renew my objection to this item. I do... I've mentioned before that I appreciate the changes that we've been able to make here as a board due to COVID that we've been able to evolve and do some things that might have not thought possible especially with the Brown Act which requires us all to be here or if we're participating remotely, to have to publish the location where we're in attendance. Obviously technology has evolved very quickly in part to the needs of the public and meetings like this today and so I just wanted...I'm going to vote against this again.

No longer need to use the pandemic as a reason for us to be able to circumvent existing Brown Act laws for public meetings. But I do want to highlight that there is two assembly bills right now that are proposing to change the Brown Act, allow Zoom meetings by elected officials. Assembly Bill 1944 and Assembly Bill 2449. I hope our ledge committee can take a look at those And maybe we can end up supporting those moving forward. I'm not, I don't object to how we've been going about this. I just object to using the state of emergency as a reason for that. So I'll take a

roll call vote on it. Thank you Supervisor Nelson. The Ledge Committee has already put that forward and our State Delegation is working on that So in the meantime, may I have a motion to direct staff to hold remote hearings because we the supervisors have considered the circumstances of the state of emergency and that local officials continue to impose or recommend measures to promote social distancing.

Salute.

Supervisor Hart makes the motion

I will second it. You know, I personally feel safe meeting in person and but I also don't want to make that judgment for all of my colleagues. And I think even though our decision would not stop our advisory bodies from making findings, I think it would be harder for them to make findings. And you know, I serve on our Library Advisory Committee. I serve on a number of advisory committees The people's level of risk is different based on age, based on circumstances. And I think that the intention of this is that we still are in a place where COVID has made it necessary to have a continuity of government and government work despite the fact I have many times had either, you know more than a quorum of people who are afraid to meet in person or more than a quorum of people who have been exposed and therefore should not meet in person.

And so, you know, I think I'm okay to vote for this one more time. The privilege of changing my mind next month if things are going along a lot better. But I think the issue for me is not so much just where we are as a board, but where our advisory boards are that caused me to want to make this finding one more time.

Supervisor Nelson did you have an additional comment? Okay would you call the roll Madam Clerk?

Motion passes 3-2.

Turning to A8, Madam Clerk would you read that into the record please?

Chair Hartman and members of the Board Administrative Item Number 8 is from the County Executive Office it is to consider recommendations regarding a response to the 2021 Grand Jury Report Idle Oil Wells in Santa Barbara County And we have five requests to speak via Zoom on this item. And we will begin with Brian Trautwein, to be followed by Alicia Rossler. Brian?

And I would like to close the queue for public comment.

Good morning Chair and Supervisors. I'm Brian Trautwein with the EDC EDC supports all 4 Grand Jury recommendations. 1, to have an annual staff report to the supervisors on Idlewell's health and environmental impacts and 2, on potential costs to the county 3, to maintain adequate staff for annual monitoring of all Idlewells and 4, to enforce compliance with the Petroleum Code provisions for removal of old oil equipment when no longer needed According to the Grand Jury report which cited CalGEM's data, there are at least 926 long-term idle wells in the county. These are wells that have been idle for at least 8 years and are the most problematic of all idle wells.

Idle wells can have disastrous consequences on health and safety. BRCA orphaned 212 wells in Cat Canyon when it went bankrupt. Many of these wells are decades old and pose serious health and environmental hazards. They can leak oil like the Toro Creek Oil Spill. Studies referenced in our letter prove idle wells leak methane and are a significant source of greenhouse gases. Some of the idle wells orphaned by Greco leak, and have not yet been repaired according to APCD. EDC found that idle wells are often associated with soil contamination which can spread in our environment by soil erosion and be carried away by runoff and affect wildlife. And idle wells can contaminate groundwater drinking supplies with toxic chemicals. An earlier EPA study found that CalGem does not provide adequate oversight to protect our groundwater from idle injection wells.

We've learned that companies frequently use idle wells to defer and avoid long-term costs of remediation. According to the study performed for EPA, only quote a small fraction of long-term idle wells are plugged and abandoned each year. The longer wells sit idle, the more likely the well casings fail. And we have an unfortunate history of dirty oil operations in Santa Barbara County polluting our soil and our water supplies.

Everyone here is aware that Santa Maria Homes had to be demolished to clean up contaminated soil from prior oil operations. We all know about the 100 emergency oil seep cans installed at work at Hills. 50,000 cubic yards of tar enough to cover a football field under 30 feet were recently identified in Cat Canyon and only 25% was removed. Idle wells can be ticking time bombs, leaking methane, contaminating groundwater and threatening health. This is not a situation of out of sight out of mind or what we don't know can't hurt us. Idle wells may impose significant financial costs on our communities and the county if left unchecked and unregulated by the county. When bankrupt operators orphan idle wells and there's inadequate state funding to clean it up, we all bear the consequences.

We need to get ahead of the curve with idle oil wells. The grand jury is right. It's the county's responsibility to protect the public and environment from the legacy effects of idle and orphaned wells approved by the county. Better tracking and reporting by the county needs to be the first step. Therefore, EDC requests the board instruct P&D to implement the grand jury recommendations.

EDC senior attorney Elisa Rossler will provide additional details on what the county can do to better protect the public and environment from the effects of idle wells permitted by the county. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Troutline.

We will now

go to Alicia Rossler to be followed by Matt Guthrie. Alicia?

Can you hear me now?

Okay. Yes, we can hear you.

Thank you. Good morning Chair Hartman and Supervisors. I'm Alicia Rossler, Senior Attorney for the Environmental Defense Center. Thank you Brian for highlighting the potential threats to our community's health caused by unchecked idle oil wells. EDC respectfully requests the board not to submit the letter put forth by county staff as Attachment A which asks the board to wholly ignore the grand jury's findings and recommendations. Both the Grand Jury And EDC's research concludes that the county is not providing regulation or monitoring of idle wells and is not protecting our community from these potential hazards.

First, the county does not currently track or have knowledge of which of the approximate 2500 wells it inspects annually are idle how many there are and how long they've been left idle although County Petroleum states that it inspects each well annually These inspections are inadequate because the county has no knowledge whether the well it's inspecting is idle or operating on that one day of the year they're inspected.

Second, the county only conducts a visual inspection of these oil wells which is also inadequate to detect whether there's any soil contamination or groundwater contamination from an idle oil well that's been left sitting for years. Third, the county currently relies solely on CalGEM to regulate all of our oil wells. Our idle oil wells. Yet County staff has no knowledge of where CalGEM's inventory of idle wells comes from or if and when CalGEM inspects or monitors these wells. There is no communication or coordination with CalGEN regarding the regulation of idle wells in our county. It also appears that CalGem's idle well numbers for our county far exceed the number of wells the county is inspecting annually. These numbers just need to be reconciled.

Lastly, the staff's suggestion to provide a portal with well inspection reports while helpful for transparency does not address this issue of regulation of idle wells since these reports fail to include any information about whether the well is idle or not and only reports what was observed on that one day in the year it was inspected. Given these facts, the county cannot submit a letter to the judge Stating that it is adequately identifying and monitoring idle wells and protecting our community when the truth is, it is not.

Instead, EDC urges the board to follow the grand jury's recommendations and at least request an investigation and annual report that provides a complete accounting of the number of idle wells, how long they've been idle, who owns them, the number of reported oil spills and leaks from these wells, and the potential risk they pose to the water resources air quality in soil Ventura County is undergoing a similar investigation right now, and we hope Santa Barbara will do the same.

We urge you to take action now to further the work of the grand jury and require a full accounting of the status of oil wells in our county. Section 25-2 of our county code provides that the Petroleum Department provide for the reasonable regulation of onshore petroleum facilities and operations. These would include idle wells, and this is something that's certainly not happening right now. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

And we will now go to Matt Guthrie to be followed by Andy Caldwell, Matt.

Can you hear me OK?

Yes.

Good morning, Chair Hartman and members of the board. My name is Matt Guthrie and I'm speaking this morning on behalf of our client, the Coastal Energy Alliance or CEA. CEA is a group that educates the public on energy issues and advocates to policymakers further the successful production distribution marketing consumption of local energy resources focusing on coastal California CAA appreciates this opportunity to discuss the regulation of idle wells in onshore oil fields. The onshore oil and gas industry is regulated by over two dozen state, federal and local regulatory agencies including CalGEM, the County Petroleum Unit, Air Pollution Control District, Fire Department just to name a few.

As articulated in the board's response letter, CalGEM revised its idle well regulations in 2019 to create more stringent requirements on operators to create incentives for operators to manage As a matter of fact, AB 2729 was authored by Supervisor Williams when he was a member of the state legislature. The regulations now require idle wells to be tested and if necessary repaired or permanently abandoned. CalGEM also ensures that the industry, not the taxpayers, pays for the remediation of oil and gas operations through two state funds paid for by operator assessment fees and idle well fees. According to CalGEM, the updated regulations are working. Quote, wells are being plugged before they become a problem and operators are compliant.

We support the board's response letter highlighting the regulatory protections in place and applaud the efforts of the hardworking county staff who ensure that oil produced in Santa Barbara County meets the highest environmental safety and social standards in the world. Thank you for your time.

We will now go to Andy Caldwell, who is our final speaker on this item. And before we proceed to Andy as another reminder to members of the public who are logged in on Zoom for departmental item number three, if you can please kindly log out, you can log back in around 11, 1130 as the departmental item number three will not be heard until noon, until closer to noon. So anyone logged in for departmental item number three, if you could please log out that would be greatly appreciated.

We will now go to Andy Caldwell, who's

our final speaker.

Chair Hartman, members of the board, Andy Caldwell representing CoLab. We have great respect for the grand jury but we think on this one they missed at least part of this issue a swing and a miss so to speak and it would have been helpful if they would have interviewed at least one oil operator somebody in the regulated community to get a better picture of what's actually going on here And this is a big issue, it totally ignored the fact that the APCD goes to every single well in our county. Whether it's idle long term idle and or operating and they use this sniffer device and years ago we demonstrated this to the board.

And that sniffer device detects any gas leak. And if there is a leak, the operator has 24 hours to stop the leak. This is a big issue. The second point, the grand jury report failed to provide even one case of an oil well that contaminated any water well despite all the rhetoric that you've already heard today and this third point It blamed the issues of housing being built where it was discovered on idle wells and leaking wells. But the fact of the matter is, it was sumps and surface facilities that were improperly abandoned. I know something about this because my father-in-law had one of those houses. It was not a well, it was a sump slash surface facility that was improperly abandoned. Words in terms matter.

And unfortunately, the grand jury report failed to make distinctions. And then secondly, this thing is focused on the county your letters back to the grand juror and accounting. But again, there's several organizations that are regulating in monitoring the oil industry as a whole. So we support your staff response and ask your board to approve the same thank you.

Thank you Mr. Caldwell

And that was our final speaker on this item.

Supervisor Williams?

Well, I'm in a difficult position of how to handle this going forward. I don't necessarily with all certitude disagree with staff's response to the grand jury and I can understand sort of maybe the Reaction when a grand jury and I'm sure with some help by local activists are, you know essentially are charging a responsibility when the county is not the primary regulator.

We're not even the secondary regulator where the tertiary or regulator that primary regulators Cal Jams to secondary regulators APCD. But I still have after reading the materials, and I really appreciate staff getting back to emails I sent at 945 last night. So anybody who doesn't think P&D staff works hard, there's just one example of them working hard. Though there is monitoring, I still am left with an overriding question of isn't there something more we can do? The problem is out there.

Both because of my legislation and Senator LeMond's legislation, there is an improvement in the kind of regulatory framework for Cal Jams But we still have thousands of wells across the state and in our community, hundreds that remain idle even when the price of oil is sky high. And you just gotta wonder about that right? In these cases these are folks who have an existing right to continue to extract they're just not utilizing that existing right And in a lot of these cases, you got to wonder is this really an idle well or is this a well that someone's just wanting to orphan right? That they don't know if they're going to be around forever.

And would like to be someone else's responsibility. And just for those in the audience, there's three confusing terms here. Abandoned well is good. That's a properly kept well that has run out of its lifetime. An idle well could be good, could be bad, right? is really bad, which means that somebody had responsibility for it and went out of business and transfers that responsibility onto the taxpayer.

And that's what I you know so I just am not confident from my past experience with Cal Jams that they're like kind of regulatory Framework is good enough for what I would consider what we should have here in Santa Barbara County. And I guess my overriding question to the staff is, is there something else that we could do to ensure that there's not methane emissions from these wells and that these aren't idle wells they're about to be passed on to the body politic as an orphan well?

Supervisor Williams, did you want Director

Baumann to answer this? I'll just tell my colleagues. I was just going to ask that we defer this and make it the item and talk about it another day given how big of a day there is but I asked County Council and were under a sharp deadline for response to the grand jury so that's not much of an option.

Good morning members of the board. Supervisor Williams to the chair, so I we have johns are rich on remote testimony if we need him to respond some questions as well but we do have information now that through the federal government Cal Jim is going Receiving quite a bit of funding for abandoning wells. And they said in communication that they would be spending about $21 million to abandon the Greco Wells that went became orphaned when they went bankrupt. So that's really good news, that they will be able to do that. And so I think that's going to happen over the next few years and they will look at the most risky wells first where there's the potential for there to be a problem and then abandon those.

Hopefully that answers part of that question, is that we know that there are going to be resources. Right now the way our code is written, we don't have a responsibility for the orphan wells. That responsibility moves to CalGEM once that happens. So if the board had an interest in doing something beyond what we're currently doing it would require a change to our petroleum ordinance to do so.

But we do, you know as Mr. Zorbic may want to comment but I think the new regulations with CalGEM and the testing requirements and things that are happening with idle wells, that's good. That's really good. That has improved things right so that they require reports to be submitted by the operators for those idle wells. But the way our code is written now is we just require the operator to let us know when they become active wells because the period of remaining idle can Change you know they could be two months, it could be six months. You know so we just asked them to let us know per the code when they restart

supervisor hard.

Yeah, I agree with Supervisor Williams. This response is not adequate in my mind and I see that one of the options that we have is responding to the grand jury with the statement that it requires further analysis. This analysis completion date of no more than six months. Is that the time that we're rubbing up against or would we be able to exercise six months by using that?

Supervisors, this report is due back to the presiding judge actually in the 21st. So if you wanted we could bring it back to the board as much direction as you can provide us today would be appreciated. If we believe there is or for the board wants more time beyond that, the response could be that we would evaluate it and then come back but we wanna be clear and ask your boards direction now so that we've come back with a response set is appropriate that you believe we should be using.

Thank you. And so part of the response would be a preview on what that workload is going to be and what that work product's going to be and how that connects to this issue. And I think from the commenters, such a wide range of perspective on this issue. Folks who thinks everything's fine, other folks who thinks there's a real serious issue. That speaks to me to us needing a full presentation with some real facts and some real information. The public would like transparency in this issue, it's complex, multi-jurisdictional and you know this doesn't answer those questions that remain in my mind. So I'd like us to bring it back as a D item and have more substantive response.

I'm curious why the folks from the county's inspection team didn't meet with the grand jury? I don't know what the circumstances were of that

Supervisor Hart through the chair. We had a member of our inspection team that was on medical leave and so that individual is unable to meet with them, we did offer other people to meet with them I met with them but that is the reason why that individual wasn't able to meet

thank you well that's helpful

I guess that's all I have really

supervisor Williams

Well, I mean you know my suggestion if the board wanted to proceed would be to approve this with just one change which is that and this gets to the heart of the problem. Sometimes well-intentioned folks can identify something that is a problem but make recommendations that are not particularly functional for an agency. I think in many cases The best thoughts can be within the agency to figure out,

okay.

If we have a board who wants us to do more what's the most effective way? Thank you very much. You know, somewhere in the document the language that the grand jury has identified a problem and we we plan to return to the board. You know within six months to discuss if there is an additional regulatory role for the county

supervisor loving you

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm not opposed to bringing it back and talking about it a little bit more but what I am opposed to is I do not want the county to all of a sudden get into another level of business that there's plenty of oversight right now. I think it needs to be identified for the public of what that oversight is but I also don't wanna have a hearing where we do not... That hearing has to have Our state partners and APCD here as well so that they can answer the questions of whose responsibility it is and how we move forward. I think that just personally, I believe that I agree with you that it's very well intentioned, but it's coming up with conclusions that maybe just need to be identified a little bit better for people. So I think if we just delineate exactly whose job is what, that might be good public policy and shine a light on it.

But I'm not interested in absorbing any more oversight because that comes with additional costs and all kinds of other things, liabilities. So I'm okay with a hearing.

Supervisor Nielsen.

Yes, thank you Chairman Harmon. You know I didn't hear anybody actually say that everything is fine. I actually heard that there's a process in place and I heard the other side that there's real issues in the processes and satisfy that. I do think we have a process in place that is addressing these needs that are identifying these needs Many of these problems are, some of them over 100 years old and nobody is ignoring those issues. Yes there's bad operators like Greca that have been out there and there's a fund that will be tapped into which is paid for by the operators. You know yes those are taxpayers, those are taxpayer funds but they're also industry funds that have been contributed towards addressing of some of their more irresponsible neighbors.

To me, we're looking at being stuck here between the technical side and the activism side of this issue and you know the answers that we got to the grand jury report came from the technical side I know that's hard for some people to hear. That think that we can never not do more, but eventually there is this diminished return that if we go down a technical route You know, we go through all the CEQA. We go through all the process that if we have two layers or three layers of regulation why not four or five? Well eventually that's why people don't like government sometimes is because we are taking the activism side and adding additional layers that are not necessary. I appreciate them. I understand that they're well-intentioned. They want to protect people's life and safety but I think we're straying off to satisfy maybe a more I don't know if it's political, but more an activist need to continue to keep this issue at the top of people's attention that is not being addressed.

I do think there's a lot of attention, Supervisor Williams, even your own legislation. This is not a new issue where we're all looking at it. Most these issues are in my district. These are my constituents and while I always want more services for them, I do think that there is the proper oversight at this point. Now, I'm not hearing from my constituents saying they need more. It's interesting that I have people that don't live in my district tell me that they want more regulation and oversight for my district but sometimes I guess I question the motivations behind that.

Thank you.

Before we go back to Supervisor Williams for a motion, I would just like to add a couple of things. First of all, I really think that the public-facing web portal that is proposed by P&D to identify inspection date and results for each well inspected is exactly the direction we need to move in. I think what the grand jury is calling for and some of the public commenters is that we have an annual report that touches on some of these things. It looks to me like Chapter 50 doesn't have some very important definitions, so at some point we may want to actually look at that. If I understand correctly, the County of Ventura is already doing something like this. So I would be in favor of making some kind of response to satisfy the timeline for the grand jury but then to follow this up with some additional conversation and I think Supervisor Lavinino's proposal to get the different agencies that are responsible here is extremely important because we've all seen that I just want to make sure that people understand when a company leaves a well idle for a long time, it does everybody harm.