To the pleasant surprise of a virtual army of sophisticated oil drilling activists from the Culver Crest area, the County Regional Planning Commission rewarded their extraordinary, summer-long persistence late Wednesday afternoon by granting their fondest but most elusive wish:
More time to study and to comment on the ever-changing Community Standards District document that is intended to regulate strongly increased drilling in the 2-mile long Inglewood oil field for the next 20 years.
Residents have been asking, almost begging, since June 20 for the County to relent on what seemed to them like an unnecessarily fast track plan to formally approve of breathtakingly complicated sets of regulations, the Environmental Impact Report and the CSD, which continue to undergo revisions.
The government response never varied. Residents were assured that the voting dates were immutable.
On the day the Planning Commission was scheduled to forward its recommended set of regulations to the County Board of Supervisors, the ultimate arbiter, the eye-weary Commissioners, with nary a whimper of drama or protest, agreed to postpone its verdict for three weeks.
Since the sound system in the hearing room was poor, sparking called-out complaints during the meeting, some residents may not have realized the impact of what happened in the closing minutes.
Eschewing Drama
In soft-spoken, workmanlike fashion, Commissioner Leslie Bellamy made a motion that residents, not long ago, could only have dreamed about.
Mr. Bellamy asked that a third revision of the County’s CSD be prepared for professional and public review and comment within a fortnight, by Sept. 24.
That would give activists one week to react and to respond.
Too much complicated — and ever evolving — data to digest and to rule on in too short of a period, the Commissioners decided in a unanimous 4 to 0 vote.
Looking fatigued, Commission Chair Hal Helsley, who has appeared sympathetic to protesting residents in recent hearings, said he has spent his summer going through a 9-inch stack of regularly revised documents, line by line, one syllable at a time.
“I may have missed 4 to 6 pages,” he cracked.
That was about the only light interlude in an intense 2 1/2-hour meeting that turned out better than even optimistic residents could have hoped.
A New Trend
Although the Planning Commission was heavily criticized for the way it conducted a public hearing on Saturday, Aug. 2, at West Los Angeles College, loading the format in favor of the oil company, critics claimed, the pendulum has since swung in a new direction.
The Planning Commission was impressed if not overwhelmed by the tone, the depth, the breadth of vital and dense information that dozens of the Baldwin Hills region residents brought to the downtown hearing for the second time in two weeks.
Their eloquence, the scope of their research, their solid grasp of esoteric material were key factors in convincing previously skeptical Commissioners that the well-formed objections to regulations that appeared destined to prevail deserved further reflection and inspection.
Testing Out Their Logic
The Commissioners reasoned that if they themselves were staggered by the mountains of arcane information — where the important and the trivial were sometimes indistinguishable — surely amateur researchers deserved a wider berth.
Passion, of course, was present for the activists. But it was reduced to backseat status by the dazzling quality of the articulated objections.
To emphasize the degree of turnaround in favor of residents, Commissioner Helsley directed County staffers to explore a half-dozen recommendations made by residents for bringing the two sides closer together.
On Wednesday morning, Oct. 1, the Planning Commission will reconvene at 9 a.m. at 320 W. Temple St., Room 150, downtown Los Angeles.
Ken Kutcher, a leader of the main citizens group fighting for strict drilling rules, the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance, took the victory calmly.
“Given how frustrated we were coming in,” he said, “this is a nice, positive resolution at this stage.”
The Happy Ending
As dozens of Westside allies were filing out of the Board of Supervisors hearing room a little before 5 o’clock, the land use attorney said:
“It has been a nice transformation,” referring to a major reversal from early momentum that seemed to favor the oil company.
“It looks like we are going to have an opportunity to have some productive input that Commissioners directed staff to listen to.
“I am very pleased with that outcome and I am hopeful it will be productive.”
Since last spring, the one million residents within the orbit of the oil field have been told that the three-week delay just granted was not possible.
They were told the slightest deviation in the schedule would foul the tightly plotted plans of the Board of Supervisors to approve the CSD just in time to have the regulations take effect when stepped-up drilling started.
Such talk, however, was not raised yesterday.
Nothing Likely to Change?
Speculation was that despite handwringing by the Board of Supervisors, it will vote approval of the CSD on the originally scheduled date, the third week of October.
Not accidentally, this coincides with the original timeline of Plains, Petroleum & Exploration Co.
PXP’s self-imposed moratorium on drilling expires as the Supervisors meet to vote.
Two weeks later, County voters will choose between state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Culver City) and L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks as a successor on the board to Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who is retiring.
In an effort to keep lines of credit clean and straight, Ms. Brathwaite Burke has made it known that all debate, negotiation and voting on the Community Standards District must be completed in advance of Election Day.
Parks Speaks Out
On behalf of a few hundred thousand persons in the Baldwin Hills area whom he hopes will be his constituents after Nov. 4, Mr. Parks addressed the Commission. He said it is “absolutely imperative” that the governing oil field rules be stiff and enforced, “not just suggestions.”
Steve Rusch, a vice president of PXP, who was on holiday during the previous public hearing, lashed out at the protestors in a strikingly strident delivery to the Commission.
Stunned by the vastness of the neighbors’ closely organized campaign in quest of strict drilling regulations, Mr. Rusch suggested their objections were, at best, disproportionate, especially since PXP has tried avidly to help shape regulations that are “unprecedentedly” strong.
80, and Going Strong
Finally, feisty Lee Welinsky of Culver City, no stranger to scene-stealing, warmed up for last evening’s Culver City Democratic Club meeting by delivering her best sound bites of the season.
She rocked the room.
“I am 80 years old,” she said in her typically stentorian tones, “and I would like to live to be 100 years old. But I don’t know if that will be practical if PXP is going to drill a hundred wells a year.”
Looking all four Commissioners in the eye, Ms. Welinsky added, “I want you to help me reach a hundred.”
If her words weren’t a magnet for everyone in chambers, her ensemble was. Attired in electric blue, it clearly is what fashionable 80-year-olds are wearing this season.
