Taking a Stand Against Environmentally Destructive Corporations

Drive through Inglewood, past the largest urban oil field in the United States, and you’ll see them everywhere: skeletal metal structures punctuating neighborhoods like industrial tombstones. Most passersby assume these are active wells, extracting fossil fuels from beneath California’s subdivisions, shopping centers, and family neighborhoods. They would be wrong. Many are what Danielle Lackey calls “zombie wells” – abandoned, unplugged, leaking toxins and poisoning communities’ drinking water. 

Lackey, the executive director of ClientEarth USA, doesn’t fit the typical environmentalist mold. She’s a business lawyer who has found her calling in corporate boardrooms rather than protest lines. “We’re not environmental lawyers,” she explains. “We’re lawyers fighting for the environment.” It’s a distinction that matters more than semantics suggest. 

The zombie wells represent a masterclass in corporate malfeasance. Fossil fuel companies extract profits for decades, then sell the aging wells to other entities that are destined to go bankrupt, leaving taxpayers and communities holding the bill for the cleanup. “They extract all the profit, then they leave taxpayers and local communities to bear the brunt,” Lackey says.  

Consequently, there are now roughly 3.7 million abandoned wells across the nation and over two million of them are still unplugged. Each well costs an average of $100,000 to properly clean up and prevent pollution, which totals hundreds of billions of dollars in cleanup costs that major corporations have offloaded onto taxpayers. 

Even more staggering are the human costs. The wells pose significant risks from greenhouse gases that contribute to devastating climate change and extreme weather to even graver health risks – contaminated air and drinking water, degraded ecosystems, all disproportionately affecting vulnerable communities. 

Where traditional environmental groups play defense against regulatory rollbacks, ClientEarth has chosen offense. ClientEarth’s strategy is to level the playing field by taking these corporations to court, with the goal to ensure that every company becomes a good environmental citizen. 

Their zombie wells case attacks the bankruptcy schemes that allow this environmental destruction. The strategy is surgical: create legal precedents that other attorneys can replicate. Already, for-profit law firms are approaching ClientEarth, asking how to bring similar cases.  

This approach resonates beyond environmental circles because it taps into something universally understood: fairness. “Corporate greed is something that everyone takes issue with,” Lackey observes. Their plaintiffs aren’t environmental warriors but homeowners who bought property near wells, expecting companies to honor their cleanup obligations. 

ClientEarth is using their unique expertise to hold corporations accountable for their devastating impact on our planet. They’re fighting for all of us to ensure a future with clean air, clean water, and a safe climate for everyone.