And now the waiting begins.
For an undetermined period, time will be marked on the pending do-over of last year’s controversial County Board of Supervisors approval of updated drilling regulations in the 2-mile long Baldwin Hills oil field.
Until Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who engineered the reversal motion last Tuesday, sits down with the County Regional Planning Commission to organize a revision agenda, the disputed documents approved last October — the Baldwin Hills Community Standards District ordinance and an environmental impact report — presumably will remain on hold.
Or will they?
No Action
Steve Rusch, executive vice president of the drilling company, Plains Exploration & Production Co., told the newspaper this morning that no drilling has taken place in the oil field for more than two years, June 21, 2007, almost 26 months.
Drilling was halted because the County adopted a drilling moratorium that month and the state refused to issue PXP new drilling permits until the environmental impact report was issued.
Last autumn, hundreds of protesting residents from Culver Crest on southward, feared that once the Board of Supervisors approved resumption, PXP would not tarry before plunging into the ground.
But mounds of paperwork have converted any hurry into a delaying impediment.
Not one speck of ground has been creased, Mr. Rusch said, in the 9 months since the Supervisors endorsed the regulatory documents deemed largely to PXP’s liking because PXP had a strong hand in helping County officials shaping them.
The drilling action has been indoors, essentially confined to the insides of buildings.
“We have been working on implementing the CSD,” Mr. Rusch said.
Drilling machinery, at least officially, remains at parade rest while PXP awaits County approval on permits it has submitted to drill four wells.
Declining to specifically state how long he thinks it will take the gentlemen to re-start their engines, Mr. Rusch said, “By the end of the year.”
In effect, residents have bought a free year of quiet time.
Dismissal Attempt Rejected
Concerned residents received a second dose of encouraging news on Wednesday, the day after the Supervisors’ vote.
Not far from the Hall of Administration building on Temple Street, which houses the Supervisors, a Superior Court judge denied a PXP motion to dismiss the four lawsuits brought by residents after last autumn’s Board of Sups setback.
Ken Kutcher of Culver Crest, an indefatigable land use attorney who has organized and led his neighbors in this years’ long fight, was smiling over the latest development.
The court ordered the petitioners to serve any additional owners they know of prior to the next status hearing on Sept. 9.
The cases are scheduled to go to trial on Nov. 13.
In defining the cases, Mr. Kutcher explained that “all four lawsuits challenge the environmental impact report as being legally flawed. They each come from a different set of constituents, and they are represented by different sets of lawyers.
“But there definitely is a commonality in terms of the proposed outcome, — recirculation and re-drafting of the environmental impact report.”
Mr. Kutcher allowed that “it certainly is within the realm of possibility” that the lawsuits could be dropped, hinging on what course the Ridley-Thomas do-over takes.
“From my perspective,” he said, “the litigation is about outcomes. It is not about research. If the (desired) outcome is achieved through non-litigation means, that will be fully satisfactory to the clients I am aware of.”
One for the Scrapbooks
Another scene will remain happily etched in the memories of pleading residents long after a binding decision is finally rendered:
At the noon hour on Tuesday on the sun-splashed steps of the Hall of Administration, dozens in the atmosphere of jostling-crowd euphoria were congratulating each other after the Board of Supervisors’ voted to re-open last year’s supposedly finalized debate.
Mr. Kutcher, who has tirelessly channeled the wide-ranging convictions, findings and worries of residents into proper legal language and form, expressed confidence that unheard voices of the past will get a hearing this time.
Hoping to greatly narrow complicated regulations that his side feels are too lenient for public safety and too favorable toward the drilling company, Mr. Kutcher predicts this deja vu drama will require 4 to 6 months to play out.
“And based on remarks I have heard recently by Supervisor Ridley-Thomas about bringing this motion, he believes this will provide a nice opportunity for public involvement. He will try to make sure those who felt their voices were not heard last year, get to speak this time.”
Mr. Kutcher is optimistic, but with restraint.
He was an almost daily eyewitness to the sausage-making aspects of last summer’s so-called rush to judgment when retiring Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke frantically pushed through arguably liberal drilling guidelines just ahead of her departure date.
Mr. Kutcher probably wrote tens of thousands of words in densely-noted, extensively researched counseling letters to the County Regional Planning Commission. He was hoping to broaden the thin reed of influence that seemed to be the regular, almost automatic, fate of objecting residents.
“We will see how comprehensive this process is going to be,” Mr. Kutcher said, cautiously.
“The opportunity for comprehensiveness will be there. The question is whether the outcome reflects that.
“And we won’t know the answer for several months at least.”
