Environmental Report on Palisades Drilling Challenged

The legal battle to stop Occidental Petroleum Corp. from drilling for oil on the Pacific Palisades coast escalated Thursday with the filing of two new lawsuits challenging the adequacy of environmental impact reporting on the project.

The Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuits--one filed by No Oil Inc., a longtime opponent of the drilling, and another filed by two homeowners--claim that the City Council and Mayor Tom Bradley improperly approved the drilling project without an adequate environmental impact report. The No Oil suit also charged that the project fails to conform to the city’s General Plan for land use.

City officials did consider an environmental impact report for the project, but residents claim it was wrongly prepared by Occidental agents when an independent expert should have been hired.

The controversial project won approval from both the City Council and Bradley last month. The oil field could produce 60 million barrels of oil and $100 million in taxes for the city over the next 30 years.

No Oil Inc. successfully blocked Occidental’s first attempt to tap the coastal area oil 12 years ago in litigation that also challenged the project as a threat to the environment.

The organization’s new suit, prepared by attorney John Murdock, and a separate one by homeowners Richard and Veda Weisman, followed by two days another civil suit by homeowners Frances and Joseph Shalant, who charge that Occidental has not obtained the required underground oil leases from area property owners.

Occidental attorney Maria Hummer said she could not comment in detail on suits that she had not yet seen, but added: “We feel very strongly that the city’s environmental impact report is more than adequate and the project as found by the City Council is consistent with the General Plan.”