In Bel Air, where the median household income is $207,938, one entrance to the neighborhood was scheduled to be closed for filming for eight hours during one night last week. Neighbors were incensed. An un-bylined article in the Beverly Hills Courier:
Residents have been besieged by overdevelopment, construction, excavation vehicles and DWP improvements following the sinkhole incident in front of UCLA last summer. The additional stress of filming puts the community as a whole at risk.
In Adams-Normandie, where the median household income is $29,606, petroleum company Freeport McMoRan wants to expand oil drilling operations (including drilling a new well) without conducting any environmental review. Neighbors are worried that the site holds acid and other hazardous chemicals and that Freeport McMoRan is using dangerous extraction methods; in 2011, "a fine mist" of oil sprayed on a house and cars in the neighborhood, according to KPCC. The company says the city let them out of a requirement to keep two properties as a buffer zone between drilling and residents, according to the LA Times.
The LAFD, which is supposed to oversee the site, has one documented visit to the site in the nearly 50 years it's been in operation. (It's not the only probably hazardous oil drilling operation in South LA either.) A rep for the area's City Councilmember, Bernard Parks, says "He's not taking a position on the issue." Here's nearby resident Jackie Garcia:
"It's kind of dangerous, I don't agree with that at all," she says. A mother of two, Garcia has a third baby on the way. But she's never complained to the city.
"I didn't think that I was – that I had the option," she says.
· Some Bel Air Residents Are Livid Their Street Will Close Briefly for Filming [Curbed LA]
· 'Routine' planning hearing raises questions about L.A.'s oversight on oil drilling [KPCC]
· What it's like to have 30 oil & gas wells as neighbors [Grist]
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