Part III
[Previously: ‘Creating Awareness About the Risks Confronting Residents Near the Oil Drilling Field,’ June 26/ Keywords: Culver Crest, PXP, Kutcher.]
Two of the Culver Crest residents leading an organized challenge to the regulations that will govern the exponential increase in drilling in the nearby Baldwin Hills oil field were asked what prompted the neighborhood to react this time after years of apparent passivity.
Plains Exploration & Petroleum, or PXP, a Houston-based drilling company, has been plumbing the Baldwin Hills for years, almost as background noise, hardly attracting notice until a spectacular incident barged past the doorsteps of Crest residents at an unwelcome hour.
[img]135|left|Ken Kutcher||no_popup[/img] John Kuechle and Ken Kutcher, who happen, helpfully, to be lawyers, agreed that the tipping point occurred on the chilly January night two years ago when foul smelling gasses creeped up the hill while 500 unsuspecting households were asleep and bled into a number of homes, driving occupants outdoors seeking relief.
“The air quality emission that night did it,” said Mr. Kutcher, who has lived on the Crest since 1987. “They permeated the neighborhood. All we heard from PXP was an assurance that it was ‘incidental,’ ‘not harmful,’ ‘don’t worry about it.’ They also said, ‘We didn’t have enough mud on site at the time to pack in the unexpected gases that were released.”
Question: Were the events of that night the catalyst?
From across the table, Mr. Kuechle, a 29-year resident, spoke up. “I think the fair way to put it is what happened that night made us aware of the situation. Until that happened, intellectually we knew there was an oil field out there. But nobody was thinking about it. It didn’t seem to be bothering us, and we weren’t bothering it. This, though, brought home the fact there was an oil field, and it could impact our lives at a moment’s notice.
“My wife was nauseous because of what happened that night, and we had to leave the house at 2 o’clock in the morning. It was not just an incidental impact.”
Mr. Kutcher: “We are not right on the edge of the oil field. I am halfway up the hill, and we had a similar reaction that night. I’ve got two 7-year-old girls. My wife found what happened intolerable. It’s just not acceptable”
Mr. Kuechle, displaying lawyerly discipline, struck a sometimes-diplomatic, sometimes highly skeptical pose. “That brought home the fact the oil field is there,” he said. “Now we realize that, and we look at the lack of regulation, and we are saying, it’s not so much a question of being fed up. We see there is a problem, and it needs to get fixed. It’s not really being fed up. Just that we had not focused on it before. It is a problem. Any sensible person can see it is a problem, and it needs to get fixed.
“The ‘fed up’ comes in here: It makes me distrustful when I hear the ‘Don’t worry about it’ approach we keep getting from people like PXP. On that night in January, they told us, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s a once in a lifetime thing.’ Well, it happened again in February. They keep giving you stories. And the stories keep not being true. The distrust… I am more suspicious about the explanations than I was before.”
A Single Focus
Mr. Kuechle said he only has had one goal from the beginning of his group’s activism a little more than 2 years ago:
For PXP being ordered to strictly follow a set of close regulations once the company launches its 20-year plan, presumably later this year, to create 1,075 new drilling sites, and for Los Angeles County to enforce the regulations if PXP deviates from the guidebook.
“I just want a set of regulations that make sense,” said Mr. Kuechle, fully aware of the deadlines the Crest citizens’ group faces in commenting on proposed regulations that the County, with a large nudge from PXP, issued about 10 days ago. “I would have the same basic goal if I had gotten involved with this in other ways. It is not a question of being fed up. I just want a solution that makes sense. I don’t want to do anything that is unreasonable. I use as much gasoline as anyone else. I like gasoline. I hope PXP can make a lot of money and bring out a lot of gasoline.
“But I hope they will do it in a way that is sensitive to the fact that millions of people who live around the field and want to stay alive.”
(To be continued)
