PERSPECTIVE ON ENVIRONMENTAL SAFETY : Here’s a Pipeline We Don’t Need : A city panel OKs an oil-company project that has potential for causing harm, if not disaster; why can’t we appeal?

The health of our air basin is imperiled by Mobil Oil’s planned 92-mile pipeline from the Bakersfield area to Torrance. This “replacement” pipeline will traverse 26 miles of the city of Los Angeles. The new 16-inch line would have a much greater capacity than the 10-inch one it is to replace. If we are ever to achieve healthy air for our children, we must not bring more oil into this air basin for the purpose of increasing refining capacity.

The public deserves to know what this and related oil pipelines (others will be be routed along Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroad rights of way) will do to our streets, our air and our children. Unlike four years ago when the proposed 135-mile Angeles Pipeline from Kern County to Los Angeles Basin refineries was defeated by the mayor and City Council, the Mobil pipeline is being approved without council action. Our local government is asleep at the switch.

On April 11, the City Transportation Commission agreed to a new 16-inch pipeline in order for the City to receive a mere $352,000 per year from Mobil. Surely our health and the environment are far more precious. And consider who made the final decision for the city--not the mayor or the City Council, but the transportation commissioners appointed by Mayor Bradley. And we are told there is no appealing this action.

This is nonsense. There must be a public debate. Surely the council could instruct City Attorney James K. Hahn, the only elected city official who questioned the project, to challenge it in the courts.

No one supports more oil deliveries by tanker. Nor should any one support more oil refining in this unhealthy air basin. If Santa Barbara is smart enough to say no , so should we. There are other alternatives: Refine the oil in Kern County, or ship it to Texas via the All-American Pipeline. Under those scenarios, the existing pipeline could become a reclaimed-water delivery system, according to the city’s Office of Water Recycling.

Especially in Los Angeles, clean air is vital to good health. A study conducted over 11 years by Dr. Roger Detels of UCLA’s School of Public Health has found that air pollution by South Bay oil refineries is just as damaging to the lungs of affluent coastal residents as inland smog is to the pulmonary health of less-wealthy communities.

Not since the Lancer incinerator battle in 1987 has there been an environmental issue that involves so many city areas and economic groups. An entire cross-section of its population, rich and poor, all races and neighborhoods, is impacted. The San Fernando Valley and the Westside are equally affected by having streets torn up and by the threat of pipeline ruptures near homes and schools. The entire air basin is threatened by oil-refinery pollution.

While a tanker or pipeline accident is always a possibility, increased air pollution is a certainty when oil refining is increased.

Mobil says the pipeline is to replace tankers, that it does not expect to increase refining. But don’t hold your breath. Plans change, conditions change, and presto--Mobil expands refining. It buys some pollution offsets and emissions credits and we have a done deal.

Beyond the direct impact of tearing up sections of Sepulveda and Balboa boulevards and “replacing” the existing pipe, which keeps rupturing, the long-term threat to the environment includes the possibility of more ruptures. The control system for the new pipeline will be operated out of Texas--imagine the potential delays in calls for an emergency shut-down.

If we’re concerned about our children’s well-being, to say nothing of our own, let’s let our opposition be known. We need to speak up to the U.S. Forest Service, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the county and city of Los Angeles and other cities through which this pipeline will pass. It is not too late to stand up for clean air--and clean beaches--and for an energy policy that encourages gasoline conservation and the development of alternative clean fuels.