Rosanna Esparza, 59-year-old Latina and community organizer for Clean Water Action, is posted in Taft, California, a town that's built on one of the largest oil fields in the nation.

Taft's self-applauding local petroleum industry has helped to earn Kern County first ranking in the state for oil production and second for agriculture, which is no celebrating matter to environmentalist Esparza, who originally arrived to Kern County to do ethnographic research for a PhD in gerontology. She quickly realized there was real need in her community.

She opted to focus her energy on environmentalism and community organizing, although she isn't the type to wield a bullhorn during a protest. Instead, she visits elementary schools to read to school children, she works with her church, she makes connections within her community and spends a large part of her day challenging one of the most powerful industries in the world.

Kern County is considered the epicenter of the oil industry in California, producing nearly 75 percent of the state's oil. Production peaked in 1985, but it has dipped since. The county became one the largest oil producers in the country after '49s switched their focus from gold to oil after discovering the long-standing oil-like substance that was located throughout the region. Wells were installed and used to mine the earth. Kern also became known as one of the largest farming counties, where agriculture is a $40 billion a year enterprise.

Monterey Shale, a rock formation that encompasses 1,750 square miles of south-central California and reaches a depth of 18,000 feet in some places, became a target of the oil industry for that reason. According to a report published by the U.S. Energy Information Agency in 2011, the Monterey held the largest shale oil deposit in the U.S., an astounding 15.4 billion barrels, which drew industry interest.

These companies pursued multiple methods to siphon oil from the shale, including fracking. However, in March of this year, EIA amended the predictions regarding the wealth beneath the surface: the amount of oil deemed recoverable in the Monterey Shale was slashed by an astounding 96 percent, from 15.4 billion barrels to a slight 600 million barrels.

Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, is an industry-wide practice that's often combined with horizontal drilling to tap "unconventional" oil and gas reserves. Although the use of fracking boosts domestic production, it is incredibly dangerous, producing water pollution, air pollution, accidents, spills, accidents, skyrocketing prices for affordable housing, truck traffic and surges of transient workers.

Nonetheless, the oil industry merely sees Kern County as a potential gold mine, but Esparza sees the real value within the county. She often takes stock of the area by visiting Panoramic Park and standing on the Bluff, where she can the mile-long Kern River Oilfield. Pleistocene hydrocarbons were installed there in 1899, and today, it's a 10,000-acre playground of pumpjacks, pipes and boilers, making it the third-largest oilfield in the state. Biking and jogging trails are inexplicably traced throughout the polluted area.

Billion dollar industries operate throughout the county, but in some communities more 40 percent of the population live below the poverty line, which is twice the state average. Wealth is extracted from the land and below the soil and handed off to corporations, while the Hispanic or Latino locals, most who are farmworkers, continue to feel the weight of the environmental burdens, such as drinking water contaminations.

"We're asking individuals what the impacts [of living near an oil field] have been," Esparza explained to Faces of Fracking. "How do they feel? How is it affecting their everyday lives? Do they have existing chronic conditions that are exacerbated because of living in the community?

"We know that communities that are within five miles of unconventional drilling are more apt to experience headaches, nausea, vomiting, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and kidney diseases."

Two hundred and twenty-four wells have been fracked in the Lost Hills fields, most within the past two years. This produces millions of gallons of toxic waste water that contaminates food, surface water, ground water and the air within low income communities.

However, failure to clearly pinpoint where residents' health problems are coming from makes it impossible to prove that fracking caused the health issue. Also, fracking companies were only recently mandated to disclose the chemicals that they used and they're exempt from federal law that protects public health.

Esparza continues to speak out against the lack of transparency within the industry, the reckless distribution of pollutants, the silencing of those who raise questions and poisoning of low income people to inflate others' gluttonous wealth.