Oil Drilling in the Palisades
A key aspect of the Palisades energy project was withheld from the Letters which appeared on Jan. 28. The aspect most often overlooked, and central to any respectable discussion of this project, is the land trade offered by the City Council and accepted by Occidental Petroleum Corp. in 1969.
Occidental traded its four-acre drill site in Portrero Canyon to the city for the two-acre drill site, inland of Pacific Coast Highway, which it owns today. The City Council converted the Portrero Canyon site into a park.
Occidental agreed to the trade, given the written guarantee that it could drill for oil from its new site. City Councilman Marvin Braude, who led the effort to make the land trade in 1969, is now attempting to rescind the written and legal agreements made in that trade.
Occidental has successfully met every legal and regulatory requirement necessary for such a project. It has agreed to stabilize the slopes adjacent to the site at its own expense by installing a dewatering system. The environmental impact report has been approved by every necessary governing body, and most recently, reviewed by the state courts.
This project is the most thoroughly examined one of its type in the history of this city, and probably the country.
Braude is jeopardizing the estimated $100-$200 million in city revenues that will be generated by this project.
When my husband, Howard Finn, was a city councilman, he supported the Palisades energy project.
ANNE V. FINN
Sunland
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