Oil Field Gas Turns Dream to Nightmare

Mario and Marisela Flores came from Mexico with nothing but a child on the way. He worked as a truck driver, she in a fast-food restaurant.

It took them nearly a decade to save the $10,000 down payment on a four-unit apartment complex just west of downtown--their ticket, they thought, to self-sufficiency.

“It was going to be a . . . dream [but] became a real nightmare,” Mario Flores said.

Today, the Flores family and all 12 of their tenants are living in hotels paid for by Red Cross vouchers. The Fire Department ordered the three-house complex vacated Sunday after methane gas rising from an underground oil well, apparently beneath one building, accumulated to a potentially explosive level.

With a daughter now 12, the Floreses are on the verge of losing everything. Their future has become entangled in a web of local, state and federal regulations.

To two experts familiar with the case, it exposes serious flaws in a state program funded by the oil industry that is intended to clean up abandoned wells leaking hazardous gases.

And the inadequacy of the system, they say, has dangerous implications for potentially hundreds of other properties built over the city’s extensive oil fields.

“That thing could actually blow up out there,” said Charles Buckley, a Westlake environmental engineer who examined the property. “We should find these things and fix them before somebody gets killed.”

The Flores property is one of thousands built on the Los Angeles Oil Field, a swath of wells stretching from Chinatown to Hollywood. After a 1985 methane explosion and fire in the Fairfax district, the state set up what has become known as the orphan well fund. It draws $1 million a year from oil industry taxes to properly seal off leaking wells.

The Floreses’ 1934 complex, across the street from an oil company tank yard, had come to the attention of local health and safety officials numerous times over more than a decade, but none had asked the state to resolve the problem.

A spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department said inspectors recommended in 1984 that the owner put a vent in the basement unit of the main house to dissipate a strong rotten-egg smell, which is characteristic of hydrogen sulfide, a highly toxic byproduct of crude oil. In addition, county health officials made trips to the house in the 1990s and recommended a ventilation system.

The Flores family bought the complex three years ago, drawn by the $155,000 price tag.

“To be honest, I made a mistake,” said Mario Flores, who had played the guitar on buses for change before coming to the United States. “I wasn’t informed about what was involved in buying a house.”

His mistake was allowing himself to believe the strong rotten-egg smell coming from the basement was a plumbing problem.

After he realized the problem was more serious, Flores said, he made calls to fire and health officials, but they “never had any answers.”

Then, in September, the smell worsened to a powerful, acrid stench. A tenant’s complaint brought in county health inspectors, who told Flores that a young couple renting the basement would have to leave. They allowed occupants to remain in the rest of the units.

At that point, state officials stepped in and agreed to earmark as much as $100,000 from the orphan well fund to seal the well, and the city lent Flores $50,000 to do the necessary technical studies.

But the plan faltered when Buckley’s firm, California Environmental Geologists and Engineers, concluded from soil tests that the well was under the house.

State officials said regulations governing the orphan well fund would not allow it to be used to demolish or move the house to gain access to the well.

Buckley said he made a personal appeal to the director of the state Conservation Department to make an exception but was turned down.

A newspaper account brought the Floreses’ predicament to the attention of Angelo Bellomo, director of environmental health and safety for the Los Angeles Unified School District and a former state environmental official.

“Like his name says, he’s an angel to me,” Mario Flores said. “He’s the only one who started moving things.”

Bellomo, who said his involvement is not connected to his school duties, tried to spur action by the state but got nowhere.

“To me it is really unfortunate that a potential serious exposure like this one has to go so long, even when the agencies are well aware of the potential health and safety significance, to get some resolution,” Bellomo said.

“This could represent one of hundreds of other examples.”

State officials stood by their decision. “Not that we’re not sympathetic,” said Don Drysdale, spokesman for the state’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources. “If you start . . . using that fund for purposes for which it is not designated, that is all you will be doing.”

Meanwhile, city housing officials are considering a plan to move the house to an empty lot next door. The money for that, like the $50,000 that Flores has already borrowed from the city, would not have to be repaid until Flores sold the house.

But, under federal regulations, the loan cannot exceed 90% of the property’s value.

Even if the move is feasible, considering what Flores paid for the house and has already borrowed, it is unlikely that he would retain a penny of equity.

“It’s just too much pressure,” Flores said. “I don’t know what to do now.”

Buckley and Bellomo said the restrictions on the orphan well fund need to be reevaluated.