Worried, complaining Culver Crest residents, led by the venerable Dr. Suzanne DeBenedittis, happily found uniform support for their fears of the health perils of the nearby Inglewood Oil Field from the half-dozen City Council candidates who participated in a forum last evening at El Rincon Elementary.
Neither is new — the concerns nor the solution pledges. But members of the sponsoring Culver Crest Neighborhood Assn. were at least temporarily mollified by the responses.
Council incumbent Meghan Sahli-Wells, Goran Eriksson, Daniel Lee, Thomas Small, Scott Wyant and Marcus Tiggs all vowed meaningful help.
But it was noted repeatedly that Culver City is unable to act unilaterally. Partners with heft are necessary because only 10 percent of the oil field is in Culver City, and the County, owner of the other 90 percent, has not been inclined brook changes.
“Now the oil company (Freeport-McMoRan) wants permits to frack and extract even closer to our homes,” said Dr. DeBenedittis, a longtime campaigner. “It has plans to vertically drill ad extract oil from beneath many Culver City residences.”
Optimistically, Dr. DeBenedittis added:
“We have the opportunity to help direct what happens by knowing what is facing us, learning the facts, carefully vetting the (three) candidates we decide to vote for.”
“The continuing presence of the sprawling, percolating oil field “an absurdity, especially in the wake of Porter Ranch,” Mr. Small, an environmentalist, said that an imaginative solution has been found in his native Northern California.
“They have had tremendous success,” he said, “creating coalitions of different concerned groups to actually buy property that is valuable parkland. Then they return it to a state that is not industrialized, the way the oil field is here.
Awaiting Inevitable Burst
“We need to take a long view and focus all of our forces. The Inglewood Oil Field is a time-bomb waiting to happen. We need to see the big picture, a future without this oil field.”
Environmentally aware as his colleagues are, Mr. Wyant spoke as a pragmatist. “The County owns that land,” he said. “They have made their deal. We can exert some pressure on them, but not a lot at this point.
“As a City Council member, our job is the health, safety and welfare of the citizens. Period.
“What we can do in the short term — because that is what matters first – we have to finish out Environmental Impact Report. It has been languishing. We have to finish it now. This is a good time to do it because the oil companies up there aren’t making any money anyway. We need to go and do as many setbacks as we can to move whatever oil field availability is available to the companies as far away from you all as possible,” Mr. Wyant said.
The professional environmentalist Mr. Eriksson was less sanguine.
“The big elephant in the room is the County,” he said. “There is nothing we can do. We need to seriously work on our County representatives because they control 90 percent of the field.”
As a member of the Council’s Oil Drilling Subcommittee, Ms. Sahli-Wells, a passionate environmentalist, “we are putting in strings and regulations (that are legally defensible). They go much farther than what the County has put in for their 90 percent.
“I don’t think, long-term, we should be doing any enhanced oil drilling in an urban population. There are a million people within a five-square mile radius of the oil field. Should they be fracking there on a 7.4 fault line? No.”
Mr. Lee assumed perhaps the most muscular stance after saying that he has given the subject considerable reflection.
“I favor joining our regional partners in pushing out Freeport-McMoRan permanently,” he said. “Not focusing on setbacks or mitigation but getting rid of the Inglewood Oil Field. It was going to be closed down in 2004 and 2005 and turned into a park. I think it should be turned into a wind and solar farm.
“Once it is mitigated,” said Mr. Lee, “and all of the cancerous elements of oil extractions are taken out, then it can be turned into a park.”
