Brimming with confidence that they had finally found a forum where they could air their apprehensions about imminent oil drilling, the nearly 400 oil field-adjacent residents who flocked to West L.A. College at the lunch hour on Saturday soon were let down by the format and the tone of the meeting. The public’s role was slashed, a crushing decision apparently made on the fly, during the meeting. When the tightly run meeting was concluded 3 hours later, with Swiss precision, most of the crowd seemed to feel deflated, disappointed, discouraged and perhaps defeated as they sadly trooped away from the campus.
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A meeting that potentially was designed for loudness, anger and marginal civility never deteriorated despite the stark turn of events. On the contrary, the afternoon played out as serenely as a summer supper at a country church. The overflow crowd was graded as surprisingly well-behaved, hardly ever evincing its disappointment in any noticeable manner.
On the eve of the meeting, Steve Rusch, for years the face of the oil drilling company in question, predicted that “99 percent” of the meeting would be devoted to community expressions of concern about air quality, leakage, subsidance and related matters.
However, the public turned out ti be a member of the supporting cast instead of a star or co-star.
Their Clearest Shot
A so-called ultimate showdown — the only access ordinary persons would have during the 60-day comment period to the powerful Regional County Planning Commission — came and went, some said, with only the scantiest comments allowed from the previously pumped-up crowd that filled the Fine Arts Auditorium.
The heavily publicized meeting leads up to the Planning Commission’s September recommendation vote and the County Board of Supervisors’ October final-resort vote on the rules and conditions governing oil drilling for the next 20 years by PXP, the Plains, Exploration and Production Co.
What was frustrating to the crowd was that so many were energized to participate along with elected officials — 4 of Culver City’s 5 City Council members, 2 School Board members and Couynty Board of Supervisors candidates state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas and L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks — yet the public comment was shrunk to perhaps 25 percent of the program.
Culver Crest activists Ken Kutcher and John Kuechle, leaders of a lay campaign to implement stricter regulations they say are more health- and welfare-based, fear that some of Saturday’s participants may be too dejected by the outcome to continue fighting to the end.
Repeat 3 Times
The stated purpose of the summit meeting differed strongly from the actual execution, they said. “We should repeat this three times,” said Mr. Kuechle. “The purpose was to hear public input, about the Environmental Impact Report and the Community Standards District, and the Baldwin Hills oil field. But it didn’t turn out like that. PXP, for example, was given the floor for 15 minutes. Rusch said, ‘We are here to hear public testimony. So I will make this brief. I won’t use all of my time.’ But, eventually, PXP’s attorney, Chuck Moore, was cut off because they were using more than their allotted time.”
PXP’s announced intention is to drill about 1,065 oil wells across the 2-mile Baldwin Hills oil field over the next two decades. In Mr. Kuechle’s view, Mr. Rusch did not break any new ground on Saturday. “Rusch said what he has said before,” Mr. Kuechle said, “that ‘a thousand new wells is just a sound bite and we might not drill that many.’”
There are two sharply opposing views of PXP’s dominant role in the determination of regulations that will govern their drilling practices. PXP, as matters presently stand, wrote the rulebook. Mr. Rusch’s view is that PXP was asked to do so by the County, and has voluntarily developed more muscular rules than it ever had to live by before.
Across the table, residents worried about fouling the air contend that while the rules are stiffer than before, they fall well short of even a minimally desirable level.
Responding to weeks of promotion, most of the new and veteran resident activists turned out with the understanding that this day would be devoted, almost exclusively, to voicing their varied and deep-running complaints to a government agency with the authority to provide relief.
Who Knew?
The first hour and a half of the 3-hour meeting was devoted exclusively to speeches and questions among elected officials and other pseudo-important persons who were granted an open-ended amount of time at the microphone. Mr. Kutcher and Mr. Kuechle agreed that this time a well-invested portion of the afternoon, useful to the decision makers and at least illumination to some in the audience who sought to gauge how much their leaders knew while seeing if they could detect a tilt in a liberal or conservative direction.
Take as much time as you wish, the Culver Crest neighbors were thinking, before they found out that an iron-clad cap was going to be placed on the session. This was announced at 1:30, which turned out to be the halfway point. They had plenty to say — and no one to tell it to.
