Inglewood Oil Field's neighbors want answers about land shift

Gale Swan has lived for 62 years by the eastern slope of the hills below where La Cienega Boulevard and La Brea Avenue crest a few miles south of the Santa Monica Freeway. The upscale homes that spider down these curving streets offer enticing views of the Los Angeles Basin.

Yet, Swan is worried.

She has been through L.A.'s heavy winter rains and the 1963 collapse a few neighborhoods away of the Baldwin Hills Dam.

But now the foundation of her 1946 house in View Park has cracks. Although it's true these hills sit on the Newport-Inglewood fault, Swan is circumspect.

"I've lived through all kinds of earthquakes, and suddenly they're appearing," she said of the cracks.

Farther west, Cheryl Slesthenter and Vivian Harris stand in their Baldwin Hills kitchen where the cabinets are splitting from the ceiling. They have lived here since 1974. In the last few years, hairline cracks have randomly appeared on their walls.

"It's gotten worse over the last year," Harris said. "I'm afraid the walls are going to break open."

No one who lives here doubts that the land is shifting. There are cracked swimming pools, broken driveways, uneven garage doors and displaced sidewalks.

The problem is, no one knows why.

"We've always suspected it was them," Harris said, eyeing their neighbor to the west ? the Inglewood Oil Field.

Now operated by Plains Exploration & Production Co., or PXP, the nation's largest urban oil field is at the center of a study that may provide some answers for residents.

The study is on fracking ? an efficient but controversial method of extracting oil and natural gas from areas once thought to be depleted ? and results should be in hand by next month.

Steve Rusch, vice president of the Texas-based company, said the study is the first of its kind in California.

He acknowledges having received about a dozen claims from residents who allege damage to their homes was caused, at least in part, by PXP's drilling operations.

"We've made contact with those folks," Rusch said, adding that the process of addressing the complaints is ongoing. "We know we have to be a responsible operator."

That didn't stop more than 400 people from gathering at Culver City Hall this month to push for a ban on fracking in California.

Fracking, shorthand for hydraulic fracturing, involves drilling a hole in the earth, then blasting millions of gallons of water infused with sand and chemicals to shatter rock formations deep underground to release natural gas and oil trapped in the shale.

The method has come under criticism. Late last year, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a report in a Wyoming case in which federal regulators said fracking was the probable cause of tainted water supplies. Then in March, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey said fracking may be behind an increase in seismic activity near extraction sites.

L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose district includes the oil field, said residents have contacted his office about property damage, but he wants to see the results of the study before drawing any conclusions.

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