Dear ER:
After reviewing the Hermosa Council’s secretly worked up and signed Macpherson lawsuit settlement agreement, it appears the entire council drank Jim Jones’ Kool Aid (now with toxic oil) as served up by the two bozos on council, “Frick and Frack”, the two aging wannabe-politician-carpetbagger councilmen Michael DiVirgilio and Patrick “Kit” Bobko, who by-the-way so-conveniently own no home or business in Hermosa Beach, but who secretly met with the oil men to whip up a settlement that benefits in my view, the oil men, and perhaps Frick and Frack, and which also essentially extorts $17.5 million from Hermosa’s residents.
Stepping into Hermosa’s oily quagmire is E&B Natural Resources Management Corporation, a company which evidently has millions of loosey-goosey investor money available to throw down a sink hole on a crapshoot for oil drilling next to million dollar homes in tiny 1.3 square mile Hermosa Beach.
How is Hermosa Beach to use any “royalties” given state tidelands law preventing that, and with an additional $3.5 million of such royalties first preposterously also going to E&B, and further with the multitude of new legal bills a dangerous drilling operation will generate for the city, especially if E&B goes belly up? Is it even legal for the city to use tidelands “royalties” to pay off E&B?
Remarkably, E&B apparently wants to assist Hermosa Beach in twisting state tidelands law by already claiming that oil will also be pumped from under the homes and businesses in Hermosa Beach. Thus expect a barrage of glossy propaganda of their “new-improved” technology claiming that the land Hermosa homes and businesses rest on will never, ever sink because of their drilling operations.
Howard Longacre
Hermosa Beach
