Public Interest Briefs

“State Supreme Court Orders Halt to Palisades Oil Drilling,” read the headline of February 8. 1973. Thus Occidental Petroleum Corporation’s drilling equipment was stopped just a few days after it started, and the company’s plan to tap the oil reserves lying beneath the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles will remain in abeyance pending a final court decision in a lawsuit brought by Center attorneys.

Occidental had been trying for 2 years to get permission to drill for oil in the Palisades, against strong opposition from environmental groups and concerned citizens. The drilling site is between Will Rogers State Beach and a residential neighborhood; it lies at the bottom of a highly unstable cliff with 14 active landslides, including the notorious “killer” slide. In 1970 Occidental applied for wildcat drilling there and was turned down by the local Board of Zoning Appeals. That Board decided that the environmental hazards (blowouts, landslides) were too severe to ignore.

The company then tried another route: in June 1972 it applied to the City of Los Angeles to create urbanized oil drilling districts encompassing the area where it desired to drill. Public hearings were held before a hearing examiner of the Department of City Planning, and after hearing all the testimony he recommended that the oil districts be disapproved–he too concluded that the environmental hazards were too severe. But in spite of this recommendation the City Planning Commission voted to approve them. In October the City Council held stormy hearings on the subject and then voted 8-7 to pass ordinances establishing the drilling districts.

No environmental impact report was prepared before the oil drilling districts were approved. At the time of the approval the City admittedly had no guidelines to implement the Supreme Court’s decision in the Friends of Mammoth case, which had laid down that the environmental impact report requirement of the California Environmental Quality Act was to apply to private projects subject to governmental authorization, like Occidental’s oil drilling project, whenever they “may have a significant effect on the environment.”

Center attorneys filed suit (No Oil Inc. v. City of Los Angeles) on October 27,1972. No Oil Inc. is a broad based environmental group whose purpose is to keep oil drilling off the coastal area. The suit asked the L.A. County Superior Court to invalidate the ordinances because an environmental impact report was not prepared, and to enjoin Occidental from drilling. 

(continued in full brief)