[Editor’s Note: As a co-leader with John Kuechle of the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance, the citizens’ group for renewed and expanded drilling in the Inglewood oil field, Mr. Kutcher has prepared probably the clearest and most succinct summary of the residents’ concerns and needs regarding drilling by Plains, Exploration & Production Co. The County Regional Planning Commission is scheduled to vote on recommended regulations on Wednesday, Oct. 1, at 9 a.m., at 320 W. Temple St., Room 150, downtown Los Angeles.]
A significant number of changes must be made to the Baldwin Hills Community Standards District in order for it to accomplish the County’s goals, address the environmental concerns raised by the environmental impact report and protect the health, safety and welfare of those who live, work and use parks nearby.
The County Planning Director requested that the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance provide to the Regional Planning Commission a list of the substantive changes that GBHA believes need to be made. This is difficult for several reasons:
(i) GBHA has previously submitted to the Regional Planning Commission a redlined draft of the CSD showing the changes that need to be made to incorporate the suggestions that GBHA made several weeks ago pursuant to a process established by the County. (These suggestions have been supported by both Jon Pierson, County-hired author of the EIR, and Mike Bohlke, deputy to County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.)
As explained in previous correspondence with the Commission, GBHA believes that all of the changes shown in this document need to be made. However, there is no bright line test for which of these changes might be considered “substantive.”
(ii) The GBHA redlined draft includes numerous questions and comments. The responses to these points will almost certainly require additional substantive changes to the CSD.
(iii) The Environmental Impact Report has not yet been revised to address the numerous comments that were submitted. These comments, and the responses thereto, will require additional substantive changes to the CSD.
Mindful of the above limitations, the following is an attempt to list the most significant substantive changes that GBHA currently believes are needed.
1. A cap of 400 should be set on the total number of new wells that may be drilled over the next 20 years. (This figure is the high side of the number used by PXP, the oil drilling company, in its public relations releases.)
2. A conditional use permit should be required for any new wells in excess of 15 per year. (This figure is also mentioned in PXP’s public relations releases.)
3. A set of special findings and conditions should be established to guide the issuance of permits for drilling new wells (including those approved by a Director’s Review, and those requiring a Conditional Use Permit).
4. All applications for new wells should require public notification.
5. PXP should be required to fund periodic community health risk surveys of the neighborhood.
6. A target date should be established for winding down the oil field, and making the land available for conversion to parkland. At a minimum, no permits for new wells should be issued after this date.
7. A framework should be established for collecting a County oil production mitigation fee, which will provide funds for the purchase of land for conversion to parkland.
8. Incentives should be established to encourage the consolidation of new wells, reclamation and re-vegetation of scarred and disturbed areas, and the restoration of priority habitat areas, in anticipation of the transition of certain portions of the oil field to parkland.
9. The enforcement provisions of the CSD should include penalties that are sufficiently onerous that PXP will not decide it is more cost effective to pay the fine than to comply with the ordinance. These provisions should include escalating fine amounts if more than one violation occurs during a calendar year and shutting down wells in the event of flagrant violations.
10. The audits and studies called for by the CSD should be undertaken (at PXP’s expense) by third parties retained by the County rather than PXP.
11. Since PXP is given the right to appeal any decision on Director’s Permits, the same right should be given to members of the public, or to an appropriate citizen advisory committee with oversight over the oil field.
12. Performance standards and criteria should be provided as benchmarks for the County’s review and approval of the numerous plans and studies called for by the CSD. All PXP-submitted plans should be made publicly available along with the County Director of Planning’s approval rationale or disapproval rationale for each plan. Because of the time lapse between certain required plans in the CSD, the CSD should require that all plans are internally consistent and not contradictory.
13. All obligations under the CSD that are not fully effective on the date of adoption should have clear time frames within which PXP must comply. In situations where it is not reasonable to set a specific number of days in the CSD, a process should be established for setting the deadline. (E.g., the GBHA draft of Paragraph E.1(a) requires that each corrective action called for by the Fire Fighting Audit be completed by the deadline set in the audit, as such deadline may be extended by the Fire Chief.)
14. The CSD needs to recognize that (i) no ordinance can fully address every issue, and (ii) solutions that are the best available today may not remain the best because of changing technologies. Many sections of the CSD should therefore preface the specific requirements with a general statement that PXP is to conduct its operations with the best available technology in order to achieve the goals of the section.
15. The CSD needs to recognize that most of its provisions should not require only a one-time action, but should call for continuous compliance over the years. So, for example, it is not sufficient in Paragraph E.3(b) to require PXP to install fireproofing around propane tanks that are in place when the ordinance is adopted. Future tanks must also be fireproofed, and the fireproofing must be continuously maintained (and replaced if necessary). (See also, Paragraphs E.2(I) and E.2(o).)
16. It is not sufficient to require the installation of monitoring equipment. Standards need to be provided indicating how it is to be used, to whom the data will be made available, how long the data will be retained, and what is to happen if the monitoring detects a problem. (See, e.g., Paragraph E.5(j).)
17. It is not sufficient to require that studies be undertaken. The CSD should clearly set forth the actions that need to be taken if a problem is detected. (E.g., Paragraph E.4(f) calls for a study to see if there has been significant ground movement in the area subsequent to the failure of the Baldwin Hills Dam, but says nothing about what steps are to be taken if such movement is found.)
18. Most of the studies and plans that are currently required by the CSD should be reviewed and updated on a periodic basis.
19. The CSD has set the threshold for detailed geotechnical investigations too high. The CSD requirement to conduct geotechnical investigation only when 5,000 cubic yards is involved (Paragraph E4) would mean that only areas one acre in size and three feet of grading would be addressed. This threshold would ignore most drill sites and ignore drill site-specific issues related to faults, erosion, slope failure, etc.
20. Important decisions that are contemplated by the CSD (such as whether to permit further drilling if it is determined that prior drilling has caused ground movement) should only be made after a public hearing. (Paragraph E.4(h).)
21. Because the County's Noise Ordinance is more comprehensive, the noise restrictions in the CSD (which are based solely on hourly noise averages and minimize single event short-term intrusive sounds) should not supersede other provisions of the County’s general noise ordinance, as has been suggested by PXP (Paragraph 5).
22. The obligation to restore property after a release of pollutants should not be limited to PXP’s premises, but should extend to other properties that may be impacted. (Paragraph G.2(b).)
23. The insurance required from PXP must include tail coverage so that the insurance will be available to cover claims that arise after PXP has gone out of business. (Paragraph G.3.)
24. Information received by the County from PXP should be publicly available, and provisions requiring that such information be kept confidential should be deleted. (Paragraph I.)
25. An evaluation of all EIR impacts associated with air transmissions (i.e., air quality, health risk assessment) should be conducted if the required meteorological station shows that the actual meteorological data for the oil field is different from that assumed in the EIR. (Paragraph E.2(n).)
26. The CSD’s requirement for an amortization schedule for wells currently located in the setback area should be expanded to require that these wells be properly abandoned at the end of their predicted useful life. (Paragraph E.2(p).)
27. Several changes that were presumably requested by PXP should be rejected, and the language of the ordinance should revert back to that used in Version 1. For example, the air monitors called for by Paragraph E.2(c) should be installed “on each drill rig” and “a set distance from drilling operations,” rather than at the edge of the drill pad (which would provide more time for the emissions to disburse). Also, Paragraph E.4(m) should restore the deleted language that called for the seismic assessment to be based on the “maximum credible earthquake.”
28. PXP should be required to properly cap and secure all previously abandoned wells to today's standards.
29. The roles of the MACC and CAP need to be broad enough to ensure an opportunity to review and comment on all monitoring data, CSD violations, enforcement actions, and corrective measures. This includes full and fair information and public participation through community monitoring in the decades to come.
30. Oil operations and the transition to parkland should proactively comply with federal and state laws designed to achieve equal access to public resources, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its implementing regulations, California Government Code 11135 and its regulations, the California statutory definition of environmental justice, and environmental and health laws.
31. A stated purpose of the CSD should be to ensure that oil field operations will be regulated and the transition to parkland should be planned in light of the reality that people of color and low-income people disproportionately bear the burdens of toxic sites in Los Angeles and throughout California, and are disproportionately denied the benefits of public work projects including park and recreation resources.
