Workers Pack Hearing to Support Oil Pipeline Plan : Ventura: Nearly 100 laborers--many of them unemployed--tell state officials that 171-mile project would create jobs.

Saying the project would put Ventura County’s unemployed back to work, nearly 100 construction and trade workers packed a public hearing Thursday to support a proposed crude-oil pipeline that would slice 53 miles through the county.

In work clothes and hard hats, the mostly unemployed laborers jammed a Ventura County Government Center auditorium in Ventura and told the California Public Utilities Commission that the $215-million Pacific Pipeline would be environmentally safe.

“It’s the most environmentally sensitive way to get oil from one place to the other,” said Bob Hassebrock, branch manager for H & H Oil Tool Co. of Santa Paula. “We need jobs for our people and to restore the faith in the large companies so they can invest capital in California.”

Norman Rooney, president of Pacific Pipeline Systems of Ventura, said construction of the underground pipeline would create nearly 600 jobs, 200 of which would be divided between Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

The 171-mile pipeline would carry up to 130,000 barrels of oil a day from pumping stations in Santa Barbara County, along the Santa Clara River in Ventura County and onto Los Angeles County refineries in Wilmington and El Segundo.

“As you can tell from the public hearing, the county of Ventura is for the pipeline,” Rooney said. “They recognize the economic advantage as well as our sensitivity” to environmental concerns.

If there are no delays, construction could start as early as next spring and be completed by May the following year, Rooney said.

Earlier this year, the California Coastal Commission said oil companies could continue to use tankers in the Santa Barbara Channel to transport the oil, but would have to phase out the tankers and build a pipeline by Jan. 1, 1996.

After another hearing today in Santa Barbara, the Public Utilities Commission is scheduled to decide on the project in July. If given the green light, the pipeline then must be approved by each city and county it crosses.

The commission, which has held hearings all along the route in the past few months, will weigh public input as well as the project’s environmental impact report before it reaches a decision.

The report, which is currently in draft form, states that existing pipelines running through Kern, San Bernardino and Riverside counties would be “environmentally superior” to the new pipeline.

It also states that an alternative route, going through Oxnard, Camarillo and Simi Valley, would be more hazardous because of the higher population density there.

But proponents of the plan said safety valves every few miles would guard against major oil leaks.

Gloria Glenn, vice president of planning for the Newhall Land and Farming Co. of Valencia, was the only speaker out of nearly 15 at Thursday’s hearing to question the project. She said the report did not take into account other lines running under her company’s land.

“This project should have acknowledged all other projects that are basically running along the same alignment,” said Glenn, whose company owns 37,000 acres of land. “We’re not opposed to the Pacific Pipeline . . . but you’ve got to do planning to fit them all in and figure out the best routes.”

The pipeline project has been criticized at other public hearings in Los Angeles County by residents who expressed fears about explosions, ruptures from earthquakes and train derailments, toxic fumes from oil spills, and air pollution from construction.

But Artis Hawkins, field representative for the local Laborers’ International Union, said such dangers are not a major concern in Ventura County.

“If they go through Ventura County, they’re going to have some experienced people going to work on this project,” said Hawkins, whose local’s membership is nearly 50% unemployed. “I think it will be economically sound.”