While climate change is making headlines, we also face assaults on the environment that have presented challenges for decades. One of those challenges arises from extraction of fossil fuels, particularly spent oil wells. In protecting our local communities from the effects of those wells, such as the Inglewood Oilfield, my long-term goal as Congresswoman will be to decommission and repurpose them as open space.

Access to enough clean water, for ourselves as well as future generations, appears to be increasingly uncertain. Proposition O, California’s clean water bond, is an example of how to bundle together funding to protect water quality, increase water conservation, protect the environment, and create more open space. As a member of Congress, I will push hard for enacting initiatives like this that protect the rivers, lakes, beaches and oceans, reduces flooding and uses neighborhood parks including man made wetlands to decrease polluted runoff, capture clean up and reuse storm water.