City to Look Into Noise, Fumes

Los Angeles officials have pledged to sniff out the cause of fumes and noise that neighbors say are coming from a West Adams district oil drilling site.

City Councilman Martin Ludlow, who represents the area southwest of downtown, said he had asked building and safety officials, environmental experts, city planners and the Fire Department to investigate complaints from neighbors living around the oil field in the 2100 block of West Adams Boulevard.

Residents contend that the continuous rumble of machinery and the smell of oil that wafts into their homes near the 3-acre drilling site are irritating and disruptive.

The oil field, first developed in 1962, is surrounded by single-family homes, apartments and an AIDS hospice.

The site is owned by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and leased to an independent oil firm, BSI Co. of Ventura. The church receives a reported $300,000 a year in oil royalties.

Officials from the company, the city and the archdiocese said they were unaware of problems at the drilling site until neighbors raised complaints in an article in Monday’s Times.

BSI’s environmental and safety manager, Randy Horne, said notices announcing drilling activities at the oil field had been sent to a dozen area property owners, but no one had showed up at a public hearing held earlier this year by the city.

Ludlow said he had instructed city officials to hold a new public hearing “in the community” within 30 days.

This time, officials will go door to door to make certain that neighbors -- most of whom are renters -- are informed of the hearing.

Ludlow said the various city departments had been asked to report their findings to a City Council committee that oversees planning and land use.

He said city staffers would request assistance from the county Health Department, South Coast Air Quality Management District and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

A spokeswoman for Ludlow said “the smell was obvious to everyone there” on Tuesday when the councilman met with residents outside the drilling site.

Southern California Gas Co., meanwhile, has moved to distance itself from the controversy.

Although BSI officials stated last week that they sell methane gas extracted from the site’s 27 wells to the Gas Co., a spokesman for the firm said it acts only as a middleman between BSI and another energy company that actually purchases it.

The Gas Co. accepts gas produced by the site and mixes it in its pipes with its own gas supplies; the second company removes a corresponding amount from other Gas Co. supplies, the spokesman said.