“The Hunt,” acrylic and colored pencils on paper by Leonardo Santamaria
See pages 12 and 13
See page 9
Vol. 36 No. 35
January 30 , 2015
SERVING BIXBY KNOLLS, CALIFORNIA HEIGHTS, LOS CERRITOS, WRIGLEY AND THE CITY OF SIGNAL HILL
Your Weekly Community Newspaper
O’Donnell sworn in as Assemblymember
Newly elected Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell (D-Long Beach) was joined by hundreds of community and business leaders, family, friends, and state and local elected officials on Saturday, Jan. 24 aboard the USS Iowa for a ceremony celebrating his oath of office. The ceremony featured an introduction by Los Angeles City Councilmember Joe Buscaino and a tribute from U.S. Rep. Alan Lowenthal, whom O’Donnell worked for as a Capitol Fellow when the congressmember was first elected to the California State Legislature in 1998. The event also included live music and traditional Irish dancers. “Today is a celebration made possible, in part by the men and women who served aboard this ship– but also by all of you,” said O’Donnell as part of his remarks. “I promise to be a champion for the 70th District, to govern wisely. No issue, thought or idea is too big or too small. I am here to help and be your voice in Sacramento.” O’Donnell represents the 70th Assembly District, which includes Signal Hill, San Pedro, Catalina Island and the majority of Long Beach. Source: O’Donnell’s office
Courtesy O’Donnell’s office
Newly elected Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell takes the oath of office from former Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal while O’Donnell’s wife Jennifer and their daughers look on.
Oil operator shares vision to restore Los Cerritos Wetlands, consolidate drilling and vacate habitat
Sean Belk Staff Writer
An oil operator of the Los Cerritos Wetlands shared details this week about a proposal to restore the degraded marsh back to its natural state, consolidate oil wells to offsite locations and, eventually, completely remove oil infrastructure from the habitat. Local environmentalists are cautiously optimistic about the proposal, which consultants say would require city, state and federal approvals over the next three years for a full environmental-impact review (EIR) process for creating a “mitigation bank” on 76 acres of the site and allow for public access to the wetlands with an interpretive center and trails. Environmentalists are particularly skeptical about the proposed mitigation bank, which would allow the oil operator to receive credits for restoring the wetlands. The credits could then be sold to developers that may have interests other than restoration. “We don’t have an official position on the proposed mitigation bank at this point, because it’s very early on in the process,” said Elizabeth Lambe, executive director of the Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust, during a packed meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 27 at Kettering Elementary School that drew a crowd of more than 100 people. “But [we] support the process moving forward so that we can all learn more
about this interesting and intriguing proposal.” Additionally, the nearly eight-year project includes plans for the oil operator to double its oil production by tapping into a newly discovered pool of oil at the Seal Beach Oil Field, which is only 7 to 10 percent depleted, according to the oil operator. For several decades, most of the Los Cerritos Wetlands, bounded by Pacific Coast Highway, 2nd Street, Studebaker Road and the Los Cerritos Channel on the border of Long Beach and Seal Beach, has been fenced off to the public because of privately held oil operations. The oil operations have prevented the 156-acre wetlands from being developed for residential or commercial purposes, but, at the same time, the oil drilling has left the wetlands, which once spanned 2,400 acres, to decay, causing it to be classified as “degraded.” John McKeown, CEO of Synergy Oil & Gas, spoke about his vision for the proposal during the meeting. The company took over the wetlands property and mineral rights from the Bixby Land Company after its heir Mark Bixby, Tom Dean (who owned property in and around the wetlands) and their business partner Jeff Berger died in a plane crash in 2011. McKeown said Synergy was formed nearly two years ago after family heirs searched for a buyer. He said vs.
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a China-based equity fund agreed to his concept of restoring the wetlands while still making a profit in the oil field, adding that most of the other prospective buyers were solely interested in the bottom line. “It’s one thing to leave the wetlands alone, not touch them,” McKeown said. “It’s another thing to restore them, to actually spend money restoring and bringing back [the] habitat. So that was one of the objectives: to not only restore but put money back into it.” McKeown, a longtime Long Beach resident who said he had no prior experience working in the oil industry before being asked to lead the company, explained that it was after walking the grounds and seeing the wetlands habitat for himself that he decided to develop a plan to restore the habitat while coming up with a way to move the oil operations. “I’d always drive by and look out and say ‘gosh, it’s pretty neat out there,’” McKeown said. “It’s almost another world. Unless you’ve been out there and walked around, it’s something that’s really something hard to explain. You’re literally in the middle of a major metropolitan area, but you can walk out there, and it’s quiet, and there’s animals, and it’s really beautiful.” Synergy’s plan includes spending nearly $80 million to move oil wells while restoring 152 acres of wetlands
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Courtesy Synergy Gas & Oil LTD
This satellite image provided as part of a presentation by Synergy Gas & Oil shows a site plan of the oil operator’s oil field and wetland “mitigation bank” in green along with a five-acre parcel owned by the Los Cerritos Wetlands Authority in turquoise and a seven-acre parcel known as the “pumpkin patch” site owned by Lyon Communities in yellow. The sites are where most of Synergy’s oil wells are proposed to be consolidated.
that currently encompass most of the company’s oil-field operations. Using new oil-drilling technology, oil wells would be consolidated from more than 100 to just 10 acres at two “offsite locations,” McKeown said. One drill site would be located at a seven-acre parcel known as the “pumpkin patch” site owned by Lyon Communities where executive offices and headquarters would also be relocated, he said. The other site would be located at January 30 through February 3, 2015 Tuesday
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a five-acre parcel owned by the Los Cerritos Wetlands Authority (LCWA), a governmental entity formed in 2006 through an agreement between the California State Coastal Conservancy, the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy and the cities of Long Beach and Seal Beach. In total, Synergy plans to drill 120 new wells on these two sites with 60 wells for each site, McKeown said.
see WETLANDS page 10