Infuriated by the City Council’s decision last evening to delay for at least 60 days possible permission to host a symposium on fracking, organizer Tom Camarella said the perhaps anticipated decision was a setback for the health and welfare of Culver City residents.
Instead of acceding to Mr. Camarella’s request to make Chambers available for a Saturday, Aug. 4, symposium with only the anti-fracking lobby present, the Council said it would be more prudent to await the findings of a recently completed study of fracking. Then the Council expects the oil drilling company to make an appearance in Council Chambers.
There is no time to dawdle with hydraulic fracturing dangers creeping closer daily, Mr. Camarella said.
As he stepped into the lobby of Chambers just after the Council’s non- voting conclusion, Mr. Camarella enlarged on that reaction:
“I am disappointed that PXP, by declining to come to the symposium, is being rewarded. Now we are going to wait until the study (dictated by last year’s settlement with the County and others) comes out.
“I have information that PXP already has said certain things that either are untrue or half-truths that the Council should know prior to putting together a fracking ordinance.”
Better Late Than…?
Does Mr. Camarella believe PXP will change its mind about joining the symposium after the peer review is completed later this summer?
“I am sure they will,” he said. “They have spent many millions of dollars on these studies, and they would come here to trumpet the results.
“Every geologist involved with oil, who knows anything about this, works for those oil companies. Unless they have been fired or retired, you will not get the truth material. They are keeping their jobs. They are making sure they are going to have jobs in the future.
“It’s a real problem. When they say they are getting an expert from Texas, what do you think an oil expert from Texas is going to say?
All of a Script?
“Remember, PXP can spend millions of dollars to get the right people to say the right things.”
Does Mr. Camarella have any option other than accepting the Council’s latest verdict?
“I will have private meetings,” he said, “with each of the Councilpersons. It will be much more difficult for us because we don’t have thousands of dollars to get people to come.
“In those meetings, I would lobby the Council, as I should be able to. I am a resident of the city.”
Adjusting his stance, the agitated Mr. Camarella continued:
“Look, either we have the symposium here where it will be recorded and residents can see it and study it or I am going to have to have individual meetings with each Councilperson. That is less efficient, more difficult for a rag-tag group trying to get fracking information out to the community.
“The other side has all the wherewithal. And they are being rewarded again for not giving information.”
Returning to a compulsory theme he spoke about earlier, Mr. Camarella said:
“This Council has the authority to say, ‘We want the detailed sounding maps underneath our feet so we know what we are dealing with. They have not given those to the City Council. They may have given them to the fire chief. But because of Homeland Security, they are saying, ‘Oh, they may be used to blow the place up.’ I am sure the five City Councilpeople can take an oath they are not going to do that. The Council has to demand that.
“I hate the fact that PXP gets rewarded for not giving enough information. PXP says, ‘There is no information that shows fracking has any relationship to health problems. Guess what? PXP never has had to report when they are fracking. So nobody knows when they are fracking, where they are fracking. A real problem.”
