Coalition Takes Its Oil-Drilling Battle to Court

For four years, oil-drilling opponents have criticized a Hermosa Beach plan to drill exploratory wells under the coastal tidelands. Now, the Hermosa Beach Stop Oil Coalition has taken the first in a series of steps intended to tie up the plan in court.

This month, the 500-member, 4-year-old group asked a judge to overturn a key finding by the State Lands Commission that would allow the city to extract oil from beneath Santa Monica Bay.

And the coalition is preparing another lawsuit challenging the sufficiency of the environmental impact report on the project, saying the drilling could endanger the environment and the health and safety of nearby residents.

“The ultimate goal is to stop the prospect of drilling in Hermosa Beach,” said Ellison Folk, an attorney for the Stop Oil Coalition.

City officials, however, argue the coalition’s concerns are unfounded.

“The city of Hermosa Beach over the last three years has jumped through a number of hoops to ensure the drilling would not have the dire environmental consequences that are typically associated with oil drilling,” said Assistant City Atty. Edward Lee.

The city has a lease agreement with MacPherson Oil Co. to drill 35 wells in a city yard at 6th Street and Valley Drive, about 100 feet from the nearest house. Thirty of the wells would be drilled at an angle to recover oil from reservoirs beneath the city and offshore tidelands. To minimize the effects of oil extraction, the company will pump water back into the soil from five water wells that would also be on the property.

Oil company engineers expect the wells to produce up to 30 million barrels of oil over the next 25 years, generating as much as $126 million in royalties for the city, which must spend a portion of the royalties on beach or tideland projects.

At issue in the Stop Oil Coalition’s lawsuit against the State Lands Commission is whether the three-member panel was justified in June, 1992, when it concluded oil was being drained from the city. The commission, whose members include Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy and state Controller Gray Davis, cannot allow oil drilling in a tidelands sanctuary unless there is evidence oil is being captured by neighboring oil pumps.

Attorneys for the city argued that wells in Redondo Beach, which had been pumping oil until 1991, had created a pressure vacuum that has drawn Hermosa’s oil toward Redondo.

Oil opponents contended there was not enough proof that past pumping in Redondo had created a pressure vacuum. And, they said, only active pumping meets the legal definition of oil drainage.

The staff of the State Lands Commission agreed with oil opponents, and recommended the commission vote against the project. But on June 30, 1992, the commission approved the project on grounds that it would benefit residents of the state.

Two weeks ago, the Stop Oil Coalition filed a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking a reversal of the decision, which it called “an abuse of (the commission’s) discretion.”

“If Hermosa Beach can say (its oil is being drained), then the next city can say, ‘We have oil draining, so we want to drill,’ ” Folk said. “Cumulatively, that could be an environmental disaster.”

Officials with the State Lands Commission declined to comment on the case, saying they had not yet been served with the lawsuit. However, James Trout, the commission’s assistant executive officer, noted that two registered petroleum experts told the commission that oil was being drained.

The coalition is also preparing to file a lawsuit under the California Environmental Quality Act alleging that the city’s environmental impact report is inadequate and that the city has significantly changed the project since the report was approved.

Hermosa Beach Planning Director Michael Schubach disputed those allegations, saying changes to the project have been “very minor.”