City planners who said they lack the expertise to write an ordinance prohibiting hydraulic fracturing and related oil-drilling practices in Los Angeles were chastised today by two City Council members, who demanded the staffers work with city attorneys to “finish your work as soon as possible.”
The City Council instructed planning officials and the City Attorney’s Office in February to prepare an ordinance to ban hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — and other “unconventional” well-stimulation techniques within city limits.
Council members said the drilling practices — usually employing pressurized water and chemical solutions pumped into the ground to force out natural gas and petroleum — endanger the city’s water supply and increase the risk of earthquakes.
Planners reported back this month saying they lack the technical expertise to devise “new land use and zoning regulations” to curb the oil industry practices.
In response, Councilmen Mike Bonin and Paul Koretz wrote a letter to Deputy Planning Director Alan Bell saying they were “extremely disappointed” planners failed to comply with the council’s instructions. Bell had instead recommended that an expert be hired to help city staff, writing in his report to council members that “developing new regulations on this complex issue requires collaboration with an expert in petroleum and natural gas engineering or geology, and at present, there is no qualified city staff with this set of expertise.”
Bonin and Koretz fired back in their letter, writing that “the council … asked for a draft ordinance establishing a fracking moratorium for its consideration, not a report without an ordinance attached.”
“As your report points out, the city’s permitting and regulatory structure for oil and gas drilling in neighborhoods in Los Angeles is woefully inadequate and outdated,” the council members wrote. “This makes a safety- first approach all the more necessary, and a moratorium all the more urgent.”
They noted the City Council is “charged with policy-making responsibilities” and the “role of the city’s departments is to help execute the decisions we make in the best interest of the people we represent.”
— City News Service