[Editor’s Note: Following Los Angeles County’s release last month of a draft environmental impact report on the effects of soon-to-resume drilling in the nearby Baldwin Hills oil field, this is the fourth in a series of articles on the efforts of Culver Crest residents to influence the tone of regulations that the County will impose on the drilling company. See Part III: ‘Gaseous Wakeup Call at 2 in the Morning Was Catalyst for Crest Residents,’ June 30. Keywords: PXP, Kuechle, Kutcher.]
In anticipation of the County’s long-delayed draft environmental impact report on oil drilling in their neighborhood that they feared would be too amorphous, Culver Crest residents Ken Kutcher and John Kuechle crafted an alternative report, called the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance Community Standards District, they hoped would be converted into leverage in having a say in the oil-drilling regulations.
Do they believe, after years of allegedly lax oversight, that the County will develop the will to closely monitor and enforce regulations governing the oil drilling activities of Plains Exploration &Production Co., known as PXP, in the Baldwin Hills oil field?
“Part of the reason we came up with our own alternative draft of the Community Standards District,” Mr. Kuechle said, “was to help think about and articulate the right vehicles to insure that the County will (enforce the regulatory framework). I think the County wants to do that. But the question is, would it be accomplished — like having an advisory committee, having a complaint process, having meaningful penalties in the event of violations, going through regular safety audits for the entire facility. These are things the state Lands Commission does on oil exploration and production activities that occur on their land.
“Why wouldn’t we want to have that happen here in a dense urban environment? I think if we set up the right mechanisms, those things can happen.
“It won’t all get right the first time. One of the things our draft contemplates is periodic updates every 5 years for the next 20 years (that PXP intends to drill 1,075 new wells). Let’s figure out what we got right and what we need to improve on.”
Question: What were the circumstances under which your alternative draft was prepared?
“We pressed to get (from the County) what is called the ‘screen check draft’ of the draft EIR,” Mr. Kutcher said. “It’s a working draft that a consultant prepares and typically submits to the lead agency, the public agency that has retained the consultant. They and their technical staff look at the document. There is so much legislation pending in Sacramento to make those documents public. Meanwhile, the County has resisted and refused to distribute the screen check draft to us.
“The thing that was troubling to me, at least in the County of L.A., the applicant also gets a copy of the screen draft. So PXP had seen this draft. The County had seen this draft. We knew that it existed. But they wouldn’t release it. The County’s reasoning was that they didn’t want everybody to get all worked up over a document that was going to change before it was released to the public. I think that doesn’t carry much water. Sure there will be things that will be changed. Some of it may be technical. Some of it may be policy-driven.
“It is quite fair for the public to be aware of the policy-driven changes. If something technical is changed, we’ll understand it. Point it out.”
Question: Was it your expectation you would become an equally weighted partner with PXP and the County?
“I think we will have to prove ourselves to get that weight,” Mr. Kutcher said. “I think we should, but we have not found that to be the case yet. The reality is we have to earn it, and I think we are.”
Since the organized Culver Crest neighbors — representing about 500 households among the estimated 2 million men, women and children within the orbit of the oil-drilling site — were unable to obtain the screen check draft through traditional methods, Mr. Kutcher gained access to a copy of the initial draft of the Community Standards District through a Freedom of Information Act request.
A crucial acquisition because it is the key foundational document from which decisions spring, said Mr. Kuechle, “which the entire EIR is studying.”. The County document is called the Baldwin Hills Community Standards District while the rival version generated by the citizens’ group is the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance Community Standards District.
A not so incidental footnote about the government document:
“The Baldwin Hills Community Standards District was drafted, word-for-word,” said Mr. Kuechle, “by PXP. Now my analogy is that it is sort of like asking the Mafia to take the first stab at drafting the next RICO statute. The County said, ‘We’ll fix it with mitigation measures.’ In fact, all of the next thousand pages recommend 50 mitigation measures, which call for changes to this Community Standards District. But m y view is, when you start with a document that is so one-sided that it is drafted by the party it is supposed to regulate, you are never going to get to a final acceptable result. We need to start from scratch with a neutral document. That is why the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance prepared this (rival or alternative) document. The Community Standards District that is in the EIR, that is being studied in the EIR, that was drafted by PXP, is such a poor starting point you never will get to a reasonable final result.”
(To be continued)
