After Wednesday’s unexpectedly illuminating meeting of the County Regional Planning Commission, the hundreds of underdog Culver City area residents who have been battling against questionably regulated oil drilling in their neighborhood, found out they are not alone in certain of their suspicions.
Exhilarated by strong indications that downtown voting on final drilling regulations will be postponed, they learned:
• The Planning Commission may yet turn out to be a valued ally in what formerly seemed like a onesided fight for additional time to ponder and edit the incredibly complex drilling rules.
• The commissioners, five strangers to Westsiders in the audience, are wary of ramming the environmental impact report and the Community Standards District through before they have had a full opportunity to consider hundreds of revisions and their implications.
• They appeared to be more independent than residents had feared they were. The commissioners still are scheduled to vote on their recommended regulations on Sept. 10 that will be passed along to the final arbiter, the County Board of Supervisors and the point person, the almost-but-not-quite retired Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke. Unawed by the presumed immutable voting date of Sept. 10, imposed by the Board of Sups, the Planning Commissioners suggested they will not take a vote that day if they are not comfortable with the grip they have on the two fat, complicated documents.
Scorned by many neighbors after the chaotic “community” meeting of Aug. 2, at West Los Angeles College, the Planning Commission yesterday graciously, sensitively acknowledged its mistakes from the first meeting and promised to keep on track this time.
Forty minutes into yesterday’s meeting, recently ailing Commissioner Wayne Rew, who was in considerable discomfort at the Aug. 2 meeting, put his colleagues, County and oil drilling personnel on notice.
A Warning
He knows how longwinded professionals can be when they are locked into debate with a disciplined public that is organized and broadly informed.
As Jon Pierson, author of the draft environmental impact report, was being ushered to the speakers’ table, Mr. Rew said this was an occasion to hear the voices of worried neighbors, not have the day monopolized by professionals who have easier access to the commission.
“This was advertised as a public hearing,” he said. Eying Mr. Pierson, he went on: “I would appreciate brevity. I don’t want this to turn into a ‘public listening session.’”
In Case First Message Failed
Eight minutes later, Pat Modugno, the first commissioner to say late in the meeting that the volume of data probably was too overwhelming to make a decision in less than two weeks, jabbed the next elbow into the ribs of his colleagues. He, too, was stung by the fallout from Aug. 2.
Since commission meetings operate on a rigid schedule, since 32 members of the audience had filed speaker cards, and since 2 1/2 hours remained, “this is a hint that we need to get a move on,” Mr. Modugno said.
Not so fast, however.
When John Martini of Plains, Exploration & Production, PXP, the oil drilling company that has applied for broadening its operations in the Inglewood oil field, stepped to the microphone to make a 15-minute presentation, some residents immediately were haunted by memories of Aug. 2. At that public hearing, residents, to their dismay, had to share speaking time 50-50 with PXP. Many neighbors went away convinced the commissioners did not have a true picture of their abiding health and safety fears.
No Rusch for PXP
(PXP Vice President Steve Rusch, in recent years the face of PXP in Los Angeles, is on vacation and did not attend yesterday’s meeting.)
In his stead, Mr. Martini, accompanied by PXP’s general counsel, in fact, spent 30 minutes at the speakers’ table. With the first 90 minutes of the meeting now gone, the public would have to fit its comments into the two hours that remained.
They did, and then some.
So diverse, so well researched, so deep were the 3-minute presentations by the public that the impressed Planning Commission stepped back and conceded — to disbelieving ears in the audience — that perhaps a Sept. 10 vote would be premature.