Comment - 21860 - Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Office of Environmental Justice and Climate Health

Hello, Thank you for your work on this valuable tool. I am entering these comments on behalf of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health's Office of Environmental Justice and Climate Health. We would like to introduce a few points for your consideration: 1. With respect to the geographic boundaries, currently Los Angeles city is defined as a large territory including 696 census tracts that includes approximately 140 cities and communities with a lot of diversity in population characteristics and pollution burdens. Same is true for the unincorporated areas of the Los Angeles County. We would advocate using the Coutntywide Statistical Areas (CSA) for the definition of city/community boundaries. We will be happy to share the CSA shapefile for your considerations; 2. For the Small Air Toxics Sites indicator, we acknowledge the use of proximity weighting for the selected facility types, however, we would advocate for a more granular and receptor-specific proximity weighting methodology for the oil and gas wells, particularly near sensitive receptors such as homes, schools, and parks. We would advocate for assigning a significantly higher weights to individual wells located within the established public health setback distances (e.g. 3,200 feet) from these sensitive locations, reflecting the exponential increase in exposure and health impacts at closer ranges. 3. Suggestion for future inclusion of these indicators: homes at risk of fires, Flood Risk, Tree shading, green spaces & parks. Thank you!