News Item: An effort to extend a moratorium on all oil drilling in the city of Carson failed last night after the five-member City Council failed to reach the four-fifths supermajority needed to keep in place the 45-day ban passed last month that expires on Friday.
Will – or should – Carson’s defeat of its ballyhooed oil drilling ban influence the fracking thinking of the City Council of Culver City where there seems to be a huge appetite for at least a pause?
Before enthusiasm for a fracking halt is evaluated too vividly, Councilman Andy Weissman this morning asserted a cautionary note.
[img]1305|right|Andy Weissman||no_popup[/img]“We only have given direction to staff to pursue the drafting of a moratorium,” je said. “We also have instructed them to monitor what other communities are doing. At a point in the future, yet to be determined, it will come back to us.
“All of us have said we are not going to rush to a moratorium unless – or until – we are satisfied that, No. 1, we need it.
“We also don’t want to be the first out of the blocks,” Mr. Weissman said at the outset of his seventh year on the City Council. “To that extent, we are waiting to see what Los Angeles does, if it does anything. They passed a resolution and referred the matter to the city attorney. My understanding from others is that it will have to go through a drafting process and then a variety of hearings before it goes back to the Council for discussion and a vote.
“I don’t know how long that will take.”
For his part, Councilman Jeff Cooper, starting his second full day as ex-Mayor, said this morning that “while I am disappointed a super majority was not reached by the City Council of Carson to extend the moratorium until safety concerns for the public have been resolved, I am firm on my stance to support a moratorium/ban here in Culver City.”
What happened last night in Carson, said Mr. Weissman, “is just one more piece of information to factor into our consideration.”
Neutral or influential information?
“I haven’t read the staff materials that may have been presented to the City Council last night,” Mr. Weissman said. “So I don’t know whether there is data in the staff report that would be useful in the drafting we are doing or the factual consideration that applies to what goes on in the Inglewood Oil Field. I don’t know it is necessarily useful in the intellectual sense. It may be influential regarding where Culver City wants to position itself.
“To me,” said Mr. Weissman, “it is just a piece of information. The value is yet to be determined.”
