Huntington Beach Residents Win Round Against Oil-Drilling Plan

A group of Huntington Beach residents learned Wednesday that they have won another round, albeit tentative, in their fight to block a $25-million oil-drilling operation by Angus Petroleum Corp. in their neighborhood.

“We’re elated,” said Pamela Steele, vice president of the group, Concerned Citizens of Huntington Beach, which represents hundreds of residents in the northerly old town area.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Tulley H. Seymour, in a Feb. 1 court order, prohibited Angus from drilling on its property in a two-block residential area. The court order is in effect pending an April 18 hearing.

“The court finds that there is a reasonable probability that petitioners (Concerned Citizens) will prevail at trial and that petitioners would suffer irreparable harm if real property in interest (Angus) was to conduct oil drilling or redrilling activities on the subject properties pending trial of their matter,” Seymour wrote.

Downplaying the significance of the injunction, Angus spokesman Spencer Sheldon said Wednesday that it will have no practical effect because drilling of up to 60 wells at the site was not scheduled to begin before September. Sheldon stressed, however, that neither he nor the Colorado-based firm had received a copy of the judge’s order. Angus’ attorney did not return phone calls Wednesday.

“This is the first I’ve heard that an order was issued,” said James McKay, the Huntington Beach Fire Department’s oil field inspector. “It’s the strongest thing a judge could do at this time, but it probably wouldn’t hold up the project because Angus won’t be prepared to drill before September. There are 50 conditional uses that have to be met in a building-block manner before then,” McKay added.

Calling the tentative ruling a moral victory, John B. Murdock, the attorney for the citizens’ group, said his clients no longer trust Angus or the city and believe that they have been the victim of broken promises and politics. Thus, Murdock said, the residents wanted the security of a court order to ensure no new drilling would occur at the site.

Angus can, under the court order, construct street improvements like curbs and sidewalks around the perimeter of the property, remove any structures and repair anything that is presently there, even wells, Murdock said.

“They can tell us today that their construction schedule doesn’t allow them to drill until September,” Murdock added, “and the city can say they have strict guidelines and agreements. But they’ve gone to the city to get the timetable speeded up since those 50 conditions were drawn up, and the city went along with it. And who knows what will happen tomorrow?”

Huntington Beach City Atty. Gail Hutton could not be reached for comment. Other city officials said they had not seen or heard about the injunction and so could not immediately respond.

Flanked on all sides by hundreds of houses, apartments and condominiums, the Angus site has been the source of an 18-month political storm and an exchange of lawsuits between the city, Angus and the residents, who are seeking to get the drilling operation moved on grounds that the project was illegally approved.

The citizens group filed suit against the city and former Councilman John A. Thomas after the City Council voted 4 to 3 to approve the Angus project in October, 1986.

The Huntington Beach City Council rescinded its approval of the controversial oil project in January, 1987, because Thomas allegedly had business dealings with Angus and failed to make that known when he voted to approve the plan.

The citizens’ allegations of a conflict are apparently being investigated by the state Fair Political Practices Commission. An FPPC investigator has questioned Steele, Murdoch and another Huntington Beach resident this month.

Thomas has not returned phone calls to his business and home.

After the city rescinded its project permits, Angus sued Huntington Beach and vowed to drill without new approval. The council then approved a settlment in September that allowed Angus to drill its wells on several conditions, one of which was that Angus indemnify the city in any court battles that might result from the oil operation.

Furious at the settlement, the citizens group refiled its lawsuit. The members stress that they have sought no money beyond reimbursement of attorney fees.

“We just want the noise and the smell and the vibrating walls and the fires and electrical shortages to go away,” Steele, a housewife and mother who rents an apartment near the proposed drilling operation, said Wednesday.

The two blocks where the oil field and storage facilities are under construction are an island of contrast to the rest of the neat, tree-lined neighborhood near the residential intersection of Deleware and Springfield streets.

Now essentially a field of mud surrounded by a barbed-wire-topped chain-link fence, Angus intends to store oil there one day. On the other site where drilling is planned, construction equipment and holes for the oil drills are hidden from view by a wall made of thick, 30-foot-high wooden poles that have huge sheets of a green-plastic material attached to them.

The plastic “blankets” are ineffective at containing noise within the construction site, as they are intended to do, Mary Parrish, treasurer of the citizens group, said Wednesday.

Parrish, who has lived a block from the site for 15 years on a quiet street dotted with flower beds, said that since the construction began, there has been a fire in old storage tanks that were being disassembled. McKay said it was extinguished in seconds. Residents also said problems caused by construction at the site damaged a major electrical line Dec. 15 and left large portions of the neighborhood without power for hours.

A few oil pumps scattered singly in the neighborhood are fine, Parrish said, but an entire operation would bring a dramatic increase in truck traffic onto Delaware Street and noise from the drilling would be bothersome.

Parrish was thrilled about the temporary injunction against Angus, but she said she and her husband, Hugo, both 71, will move if the homeowners’ lawsuit to stop the project is not ultimately successful.

“We live in a residential area, and this is a major industrial operation,” she said.