Part II
[Previously: ‘Will the Voices of Crest Residents and Their Neighbors Be Heard Before PXP Begins Drilling?’ June 25. Keyword: Culver Crest.]
Five days after receiving the landmark 1400-page draft environmental impact report assessing the effects of projected oil drilling for the next 20 years in the Baldwin Hills, adjacent to fashionable Culver Crest, two Crest residents spearheading the citizens’ response to Los Angeles County were asked:
“How much of the EIR have you read? And will it be necessary to read it in its entirety?”
“It will be critical to go through it from cover to cover,” said Ken Kutcher. “I have been through the Executive Summary, the Project Description, a couple of isolated views and some of the analysis.”
John Kuechle, a member of the Planning Commission, estimated he has waded through 20 percent of a document that will rise to the level of importance of the Bible during the next two months as residents seek an influential voice in determining the environmental standards by which Plains Exploration & Production must abide.
Fortunately for residents, both Mr. Kuechle, who has lived on the Crest 29 years, and Mr. Kutcher, who has lived on the Crest 21 years, are lawyers who have navigated these kinds of threatening waters during their careers.
Question: What is it about the draft EIR that Culver Crest residents and their neighbors must know this summer?
“There is something that everyone should know,” Mr. Kuechle said. “That is, the area that can be affected by another one of these major odor releases, as there was in January of 2006, all of Culver Crest, all of Ladera Heights, all of Windsor Hills, all of Raintree and all of the condos along Jefferson Boulevard, Blair Hills, and we don’t know how far into Downtown it would go. Everybody in these areas need to be worried. All of the people in a huge area surrounding the oil fields are at risk of being again driven out of their homes by some accident that sends smelly gas into the atmosphere.”
“We are talking about a very large area,” said Mr. Kutcher, “that is densely populated. It is very significant.”
“This is what gets everybody’s attention,” Mr. Kuechle said, “particularly my attention since I was one of those who had to evacuate my home in January of 2006. The concern is that if you can smell the stuff, it may be making you sick as well. And are there other issues that go along with smelly gas that might be much worse in the long run?”
Question: Is the purpose of the EIR to identify the strategy that PXP proposes to use for its expanded drilling plans?
“ That is not correct,” Mr. Kuechle said. “The purpose of the EIR is to evaluate the Community Standards District, and the purpose of the Community Standards District is to regulate the operation of the oil field. The County is going to adopt a set of regulations for the oil field. ‘You need to do this so you don’t release smelly gas.’ ‘You need to do this so you don’t release carcinogenic gas.’ A whole list of regulations that every other city and county in the state that has oil fields, already has as a matter of course. L.A. County doesn’t have much in the way of regulations, but will have when they adopt the Community Standards District.
“The purpose of the EIR is to evaluate the environmental impact of all of these things that are being regulated, and how well the Community Standards District proposes to regulate them.”
Said Mr. Kutcher: “When the County (meaning the office of County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke) began to initiate this, we were not directly involved. I believe Burke’s office took the lead on this, and they are certainly taking a lead role from what we can tell in terms of timing and press releases. When this started, one of the things the County’s EIR consultant, Jon Pierson, asked about was to get PXP’s 20-year-plan (for oil/gas drilling). I think it’s a 20-year wish list. That helps inform his study of what the implications would be of these regulations for the next 20 years. Their 20-year plan envisions 1,065 new wells, having the wells categorized, how many by year, in what 4 basic areas they would be.”
Question: How did the area arrive at this point? Is the expansion a natural progression on PXP’s part? Or is something else going on?
“Since 1924 when the first well was established, there really hasn’t been any County regulation of activities in a meaningful way. What happens is, (an oil drilling company) needs to get some kind of sign-off locally in the County. Then you go to the state, and the state is the ultimate permitting authority to drill a well. The state indicates to me that when they get the Los Angeles County sign-off, they assume that the County has done the kind of CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) work that a local agency would do. Therefore, the state does not spend a lot of time thinking about those issues.
“When this came up for me a couple years ago, I found out late that PXP had applications (with the state) for 24 new wells. The state was doing an initial study negative declaration, and a relatively perfunctory evaluation. I wrote a comment letter on the negative declaration. We said that there wasn’t enough analysis. We had this major air quality release, a couple of them, that were very significant in our neighborhood, and the ,(two incidents) hadn’t been considered. We met with PXP twice, pleasant meetings, and we received assurances (that the escape of gasses would not be repeated). Then we found out that apparently PXP had submitted these applications behind our backs, and never talked to us about them.”
(To be continued)
