The month-old Baldwin Hills Oil Field settlement agreement between residents and the drilling company PXP, dense with complexity, nuances and length, received its most vigorous airing yet at last night’s monthly meeting of the Culver City Democratic Club.
With scarcely a skeptical cloud in the sky, two insiders, attorney John Kuechle and senior deputy Karly Katona from the office of County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, briskly endorsed the outcome of four separate but commonly linked lawsuits 2½ years in the making.
Mr. Kuechle, a 30-year resident of Culver Crest, who may have no peer on this thorny subject, estimated that 80 percent of the surrounding communities’ concerns now have been met with the closure of he agreement.
Ms. Katona, the Supervisor’s designated expert on sustainability, more optimistically pegged the result at 90 percent.
Briefly tracing Culver City’s history with the Texas-based Plains Exploration & Production Co., Mr. Kuechle started his countdown with the infamous middle-of-the-night explosion of odors in January 2006 that drove fume-ridden Culver Crest residents from there homes. He was a prominent advocate in convincing the County to adopt a relatively stringent body of drilling regulations known, oddly perhaps, as the Community Standards District.
“That ordinance in my view,” he said, “solved 50 to 75 percent of our problems. As a result of that, four lawsuits were filed, though I was not personally involved — and those were just settled last month.”
(To be continued)
