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High court rejects Hermosa oil drilling
by Robb Fulcher
The California Supreme Court has refused to review a ban on oil drilling in Hermosa, throwing another monkey wrench into a plan to erect 100-foot tall oilrigs in the Hermosa Beach city maintenance yard along Valley Drive at Sixth Street.
The decision, reached without discussion by the state’s highest court, upholds a lower court ruling that the drilling ban is legal.
Anti-drilling activist Rosamond Fogg on Tuesday said the Supreme Court decision sounds the death knell for the drilling project sought by Santa Monica oil man Don Macpherson Jr.
"It means that we definitely will not have oil drilling," said Fogg, head of the Hermosa Beach Stop Oil citizens group.
Stop Oil attorney Jan Chatten-Brown echoed Fogg’s statement.
"He [Macpherson] could petition to the U.S. Supreme Court for review, but it is highly unlikely they would take it," Chatten-Brown said. "…Probably fewer than 1 percent of the petitions are granted, and the state Supreme court decision was very consistent with long-standing precedent."
Macpherson, president of Macpherson Oil Company, was out of the country and unavailable for comment on Tuesday. He had asked the Supreme Court to review a decision against his slant-drilling project by a three-judge appeals court panel.
That decision upheld Proposition E, a 1995 ballot measure banning oil drilling citywide. The appeals court maintained that the city government used its "policing" authority properly in voiding the oil contract, based on the public’s vote
Macpherson held an oil-drilling lease with the city when Proposition E was approved, and argued unsuccessfully that the measure violated the company’s constitutional right to its existing contract.
"There are implications not just for us, but statewide, because the ruling says that you can enter into a contract with a governmental body, and then it can be terminated by the actions of the government," Macpherson said following the appeals court ruling. "Therefore no contract is a valid contract."
Some observers have said that Macpherson may eventually collect financial damages from the city from a separate lawsuit he has filed, claiming breach of contract in the oil dispute. That lawsuit continues to make its way through the courts.
Fogg said the likelihood of financial damages is "highly remote," pointing out that the courts have upheld the voters’ right to ban oil drilling despite the existence of a contract.
"It’s reasonable to think that the city can do the same thing that the voters did, and that’s not breach of contract," she said on Tuesday.
Macpherson’s 1992 contract authorized him to build a 135-foot high oil derrick, as tall as a 15-story building, which would be used for about four years for an exploratory and initial drilling phase. Then oil rigs as tall as 110 feet would be allowed to operate as much as 90 days a year for three decades. A pipeline would be built to carry crude oil from the Hermosa site to a refinery outside the city.
The city’s oil saga spans more than six decades. Long before Proposition E came to pass, Hermosa voters approved a ban on all oil and gas operations within the city in 1932.
Then in 1984, to generate funds to help buy the greenbelt parkway that runs through the city, voters approved Propositions P and Q, two city council-sponsored ballot measures allowing oil drilling at the maintenance yard and a at site owned by the Hermosa Beach City School District.
In 1985 the city council established a formal permit system to allow drilling "in a manner that protects the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of Hermosa Beach." ER