Oil company fine a setback for Erin Brockovich

By ANDREW GUMBEL

LOS ANGELES - An oil company accused of contributing to a cancer cluster among former students at Beverly Hills High School, training ground for some of the most glamorous names in Hollywood, has escaped with a small fine and a promise to monitor toxic emissions from its drilling facility on the school campus more carefully in future.

The settlement, reached with government air pollution regulators, clears the way for the company, Venoco Inc of Santa Barbara, to resume full operations at the high school, an oil-rich site in the middle of metropolitan Los Angeles.

It also puts a dent in the effort by Erin Brockovich, the environmental crusader made famous by the eponymous film starring Julia Roberts, to sue both Venoco and the city of Beverly Hills for negligence and wrongful death on behalf of 428 plaintiffs, more than half of them diagnosed with various forms of cancer.

One of the High School mothers involved in the legal case denounced the settlement with Venoco as no more than a "small slap on the wrist".

Venoco has agreed to pay a $10,000 fine for what one official from the South Coast Air Quality Management District described as "concerns about potential emissions from the oil facility".

It will also install $60,000 of new monitoring equipment to help detect emissions of toxic gases such as benzene, methane and toluene.

Jody Kleinman, mother of an 11th grader as well as two recent graduates of Beverly Hills High, told the Los Angeles Times: "Venoco is probably laughing."

Ms Brockovich announced earlier this year that her law firm had conducted tests at the school and found dangerous levels of potentially carcinogenic gas. Initially, 21 school graduates with different cancers came forward to join her suit. Publicity from the case then encouraged the rest.

"I have 300 cancers staring me in the face and an oil-production facility underneath the school," she said. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the two fit together."

Air quality officials disagree, however, saying their own tests at the school have shown only minor anomalies. Medical experts have testified that proving cause and effect in cancer clusters is difficult if not impossible, and that the numbers at Beverly Hills may not be abnormally high after all.

It seems extraordinary that the most famous public high school in the United States, with a roster of alumni including Andre Previn, Angelina Jolie, Nicolas Cage and David Schwimmer, would also be an oil exploration site with 16 wellheads just a short distance from the playing fields.

But the oil field, up and running since 1977, has also been a hugely lucrative cash cow, in the past worth as much as $1.5 million annually in royalties to the city and the school district.

Venoco currently pays the city of Beverly Hills and the school district about $300,000 a year each - a source of revenue Ms Brockovich and her charges believe has blinded officials to potential health risks.

- INDEPENDENT