Second in a series
Re “Yvonne’s Aide Is Exonerated — with a Cloudy Eraser”
Less than two weeks before returning to court for a presumed ruling in the brace of lawsuits by residents against the company drilling in the Inglewood Oil Field, attorney Ken Kutcher was trying to make sense of another signal development in this long and longer running Westside drama.
A month ago, Los Angeles County reluctantly released the findings from a quiet audit into the sudden firing of the County Regional Planning Director and alleged shenanigans by the senior deputy for retired County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.
At issue was whethe and/or how much Burke lieutenant Mike Bohlke may have influenced/engineered an increase in the number of wells Plains Exploration & Production Co. could drill, on the average, for each of the next 20 years. Originally at 35, some say unaccountably the number mysteriously and firmly leaped to a PXP-favoring 53.
Ms. Burke frequently was accused of favoring PXP throughout the final hurry-up round of Board of Supervisor hearings to approve an ambitious, complex ordinance ostensibly aimed at tightening health and safety standards.
Instead, the final product, according to the partisans living around the two-mile oil field was that the long-term ordinance hewed closely to what PXP had envisioned.
About two months after the Burke-driven ordinance breezed through the approval process with her colleagues and she was luxuriating in retirement, County Planning Director Bruce McClendon, seemingly stunningly, was canned even while favorable job review reports still were wafting through the air.
How could this be?
Was there any connection between Mr. McClendon’s resistance to Mr. Bohlke’s hard-nosed wishes for drilling leniency — to increase the number of wells from 35 to 53 — and Mr. McClendon’s subsequent dismissal for no known reason?
Suspicious Culver City/area residents have believed in the year and a half since Ms. Burke hurried through a more liberal-than-expected ordinance ahead of her retirement that someone may have been revving the engine, inappropriately, backstage.
Even though a ruling in their petitions is not due until the next hearing, on Monday, April 5, PXP’s drilling schedule effectively has been stymied on hold ever since the new Community Standards District (ordinance) was okayed. They have been restricted to a low level of activity.
Meanwhile, in his third-floor law office in Santa Monica, Mr. Kutcher’s view is tentative and clouded by numerous uncertainties.
“One of the big issues the community has been concerned with,” he said, “is the quantity of wells that the CSD has authorized, adopted, 600 over the next 20 years. We felt that number was excessive because it does not include any requirements for abandonment (meaning closure in a legal sense).”
The state is charged with monitoring PXP’s conduct in the field. Mr. Kutcher is satisfied that in recent times “substantial progress” has been achieved regarding the state’s reliability as a watchdog.
“With no abandonment requirements, there only is a limit on how many new wells can be established without a conditional use permit,” Mr. Kutcher said. “Six hundred total over the next 20 years just seems excessive without further work to consider the environmental implications. We think the number should come down, and I think the audit (investigation) supports that.”
The Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance, a community group of which Mr. Kutcher is a member, “has a position we have held for a number of years. The maximum number should correspond to the figure PXP distributed during the Planning Commission hearings, an average of 15 to 20 new wells per year, and 7 to 8 closures per year. This yields a net increase of an average of 10 new wells per year. We are comfortable with that.”
(To be continued)
