In 1993 Chevron sold this field and the mineral rights to the city, which is now looking to start drilling. The royalties would be quite a shot in the arm for the city's budget.

The Derrick Next Door: Suburb Explores a Crude Solution to Its Budget Woes - WSJ.com

This area has a lot of expensive homes - it will be interesting to see how the NIMBY factor plays out.

 

you would think that someone would have come up with a cleaner, quieter, less smelly way of drilling for oil.....

 

They have. These wells would all be underground heads. I suppose the drilling will still be noisy and ugly, I don't think they have come up with underground drills. The local paper said it would be 3 sites with a total of 52 holes.

This is a LONG way from being approved. All they did was approve a company to make a proposal. Next is a EIR. Then the protests start.

There is a gas and oil well still operating up there already. A worker was killed a couple of years ago while cleaning it. Just yards away from homes on Honolulu Terrace. Some of the biggest green weinied whiners in town live there.

 

Huh, who would've thought that oil field workers would talk dirty? For shame, for shame...

 

Fire a shotgun into the ground in your back yard and see if any Texas Tea comes to the surface. Possibly your house is sitting on an old oil field.

 

Speaking of protests:

70 rally in opposition to oil drilling before Whittier City Council meeting - Whittier Daily News

 

Yeah, we even made the channel 7 news.

If you drive up around the hills you will see they have plastered it with Save the Hills signs. I just don't see this ever happening. Those Friendly Hills people are really good at organizing for all kinds of different issues, from keeping In & Out burger out, to banning fireworks, to protecting diseased trees. They have their infrastructure in place to move quickly as a group whenever they want.

 

Dig out some a your old LA pics and you will see oil derricks dotting the Whittier (now known as the Puente) Hills.

They first began drilling in this area in the 1920's, there are still a few active wells in operation today.

Most of the homes (and the people that live in them) in Friendly Hills didn't exist when this entire area was an active oil field.

We have the same signs up here in the Heights (which borders the Whittier City Limits). Not one of these homes is any older than 1985, so the people that live in them are clueless.

btw: Some a these Un-Friendly Hills residents were aghast when they discovered there's a coupla cattle ranches up here.

Every once in a while the cattle get loose and amble down the streets.

 

Matrix has a site up with info on the project.
Welcome to the Whittier Main Field Oil Project Information Site | Whittier

In addition, opponent groups have sued every City Council member save one, one council member is being investigated over conflict of interest, and the EIR has been attacked as insufficient.

The City Council has reduced their schedule to one meeting per month, technically in violation of the city charter. They say it is due to lack of city business. Opponents say it is to prevent them from speaking out.

 

...ug...my home town, where I was born

 

Don't worry, we're taking good care of it for ya.

 

I wonder what the Friendly Hills people would say if the Whittier City Council approved some 'Eco-friendly' solar arrays and electric generation fans instead.

NIMBY!!!

 

It won't be long before for Ed Roski's Los Angeles stadium complex will be built in your backyard (it's actually your front yard).

 

We'll see, Bill. AEG is making a bid for another location and they've got some cash and influence.

I'll take the stadium over more warehouses, though just a shopping and restaurant complex would be nice.

Apparently it's just too much to ask that those hills be left alone. Too bad.....

 

A coupla days ago, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune had a separate color section pertaining to the upcoming Rose Bowl.

Inside this section, there was a large fold out color spread of real estate mogul Ed Roski's Los Angeles Stadium (his name for it)...which he is paying for out of his own pocket.

The proposal to build another stadium in downtown LA next to Staples Center is, IMO, a pipe dream. In order to build this, the West Hall of the Convention Center has to be torn down.

Will the City of LA allow this to happen? Who is gonna pay for it? Would y'all like to fight LA traffic on the adjacent 10 & 110 freeways?

There was once another proposal by media mogul Micheal Ovitz to build a stadium in Carson, another freeway traffic nightmare.

Not only are the 710, 605, 91 & 110 freeways a b!tch for traffic, the dreaded 405 is well known as the world's longest parking lot!

In the mid 1980's, I drove from WLA to Cerritos Ford via the 10/405/110/91/605 freeways.. If I left at 6:30AM, I could get there by 7:30. Any later...it could take well over two hours.

Returning home at 5:30PM took well over TWO hours. I can just imagine how long that would take today.

And these figures do not include accidents, which could tie up the freeways (especially the 405) for much longer.