PUC Plans to Release Report on Oil Pipeline : Environment: Some activists are vowing to fight the 171-mile project, proposed to cross through the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys.

With the memory of an April 6 oil spill that closed Interstate 5 still fresh, the state Public Utilities Commission is about to release an environmental report on a new pipeline whose 171-mile course would include swathes of the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys.

Even before receiving the draft environmental impact report, scheduled for release next week, some activists are vowing to oppose the project, designed to carry up to 130,000 barrels of crude oil a day from the Santa Barbara Channel to Los Angeles County refineries.

“We don’t think the area needs any more pipelines,” said Lawrence Teeter, attorney for the Coalition Against Pipelines. “The more pipelines are built here, the more permanent becomes this region’s status as an ongoing center for refinement of crude oil.”

But sponsors of the so-called Pacific Pipeline are hoping that its proposed route along Southern Pacific railroad lines, combined with pressure on oil producers to stop transporting their crude by sea, will give the $215-million project a better chance at getting built than a similar proposal that failed in the 1980s.

They are also touting the proposed pipeline as a state-of-the-art venture with shut-off valves that would quickly contain a leak should one occur.

“I know there’s been a lot of leaks in the L. A. Basin in recent times, including the one on Interstate 5 not too long ago, but those have all been old lines,” said Norman L. Rooney, president of Pacific Pipeline System Inc. He referred to the April 6 rupture of a pipeline owned by Atlantic Richfield Co. that sent about 100,000 gallons of crude oil down a Kern County creek bed, shutting down the northbound lanes of the highway about a mile north of the Fort Tejon off-ramp.

The ruptured pipeline, installed in 1950, carries crude from San Joaquin Valley oil fields to Los Angeles refineries.

“Comparing those lines to ours is like comparing a Model T to a Jaguar in terms of the protections involved,” Rooney said.

As proposed, the 20-inch Pacific Pipeline would run from Gaviota to the city of Ventura along the coast, then jog inland up the Santa Clara River Valley to Santa Clarita and south to Wilmington and El Segundo.

It would enter the San Fernando Valley in Granada Hills and, following San Fernando Road, run through the cities of San Fernando, Burbank and Glendale before hitting downtown Los Angeles and continuing to the South Bay refineries.

An alternative route would run the pipeline from Gaviota through Oxnard, then east through Simi Valley, Reseda and Van Nuys before turning south in Burbank.

Both routes would follow Southern Pacific railroad lines. In fact, the pipeline’s builder, Pacific Pipeline System, is a sister company to Southern Pacific.

Rooney said use of an existing rail corridor not only solves the problem of land-use rights, but means that the pipeline would be built in areas where the ecology and any archeological artifacts--expected to be a major concern along the Ventura County coastline--have already been disturbed.

That doesn’t preclude the possibility of leaks. But such spills from modern pipelines--with their leak detectors and shut-off valves--are generally considered less damaging and easier to clean up than those at sea--the reason Santa Barbara County and the California Coastal Commission have been pressuring offshore oil producers to stop transporting crude by ship.

“We’d rather have no spills at all, but if we have a choice, we’d rather have one in an onshore pipeline than a marine tanker,” said Linda Krop, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Center in Santa Barbara.

Krop said her group has yet to take a position on the proposed Pacific Pipeline and is waiting to study the environmental impact report.

One of the prospective users of the pipeline--a consortium of oil companies led by Chevron that uses the Point Arguello production facility in the Santa Barbara Channel--promised Santa Barbara County and the Coastal Commission when their platforms were permitted in 1983 that they would gradually wean themselves from oil tankers and switch to overland pipelines.

Under their agreement, the Point Arguello Partners must commit to using an overland pipeline system--whether the Pacific Pipeline or another one--by Feb. 15. They must stop all tank transport by Jan. 1, 1996.

Until then, they have a permit to transport their crude by tanker, although that interim permit is being challenged by the Environmental Defense Center, a legal group representing several environmental organizations.

Chevron spokesman G. Michael Marcy said that although no formal commitment has been reached yet with Pacific Pipeline System, its plan “is the best prospect out there.”

Even when that commitment is reached, the pipeline has a long road ahead with scrutiny by an estimated 50 jurisdictions, said Martha Sullivan, a regulatory analyst with the Public Utilities Commission.

After the environmental impact report is released this month, informational meetings with the public will be held in May. Formal hearings will be held in June. If everything goes smoothly, the Pacific Pipeline would start construction in early 1994 and begin operating about a year later, Sullivan said.

The Coalition Against the Pipeline hopes to prevent that, just as it did in the 1980s with the ill-fated Angeles Pipeline. All the alleged advantages of pipelines over tankers just diffuse what the coalition considers the real issues--that underground pipelines could be a hazard in a major earthquake and only contribute to the region’s continuing air-pollution problems.

“The Santa Barbara folks are very happy to have anything other than tankers,” Teeter said. “The fact of the matter is ongoing refining shouldn’t go on in this region.”

Pipeline Workshops

A series of workshops will be held to explain a proposed oil pipeline that would run 171 miles from Gaviota to the South Bay in Los Angeles County, cutting through the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys along the way. The line would carry up to 130,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Among the workshops:

May 10, 10 a.m. Ventura County Government Center, Lower Plaza Assembly Room, 800 S. Victoria Ave., Ventura.

May 11, 7 p.m. Glendale Central Library, 222 E. Harvard St.

May 12, 7 p.m. USC, Taper Hall, Room 202, 3501 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles.