Residents Protest Firm’s Planned Expansion of Oil Field Operations : Pico-Robertson: Neighbors complain of odor and noise from BreitBurn Energy work site. The company says it is in compliance with city regulations.

For 10 years, Albert and Toby Kass have lived an uneasy existence in their Pico-Robertson neighborhood. Both retired, the Kasses occupy a one-bedroom apartment next to a two-acre oil field formerly owned by Occidental Petroleum and now the property of the West Los Angeles-based BreitBurn Energy Corp.

As Albert Kass tells it, it has been a time beset by his wife’s illnesses--bouts with pneumonia that he contends were brought on by exposure to the facility’s emissions--and by the seeming indifference of the various owners and operators of the site.

“As soon as you open (our) window, black particles come in,” said Kass. “We were never sick when we lived in other areas.”

For this and other reasons, Kass and other residents of the neighborhood are opposing a recent bid by BreitBurn to expand its work operations beyond its maximum allotted 10 days per month. Anything more, they contend, would diminish their neighborhood’s already compromised quality of life.

“It looks like an oil field, not a neighborhood,” said Kass, who like other residents, complains of the odors and noise from the work site, which begins operations at 8 a.m. “We shouldn’t have to put up with this.”

BreitBurn officials say that residents are overreacting and, in some cases, are just plain wrong. Sydney Dailey, a spokeswoman for BreitBurn, said that tests done by independent consultants as recently as a month ago found no strong smells emanating from the work site. Moreover, BreitBurn has always complied with the city’s noise ordinance and has done extra landscaping to camouflage its industrial operations, she said.

“BreitBurn has worked very hard to be a good neighbor,” Dailey said. “And they have been.”

Of most concern to the site’s neighbors is the presence of a portable “workover” rig that BreitBurn would use more frequently if allowed its extra days of operation, said Pat Chatten-Brown, an attorney for a group of local residents. Standing nearly 100 feet tall, the machinery is used to repair and maintain existing rigs.

Chatten-Brown said residents, who have taken no legal action against BreitBurn, might go along with the expanded operations if the company were willing to enclose the work site or the portable rig. According to one firm that specializes in such work, workover rigs in urban areas are sometimes, but not usually, covered.

“We’re not trying to shut anyone down,” said Chatten-Brown, who says that members of nearby temples and owners of a neighborhood nursery school are also opposing BreitBurn’s bid. “This is just an unacceptable intrusion in their lives.”

But officials at BreitBurn say that building a temporary enclosure for a portable workover rig has “never been done and can’t be done.” As for enclosing the entire work site, the company has not ruled out the possibility, said BreitBurn’s president and chief operating officer, Halbert Washburn.

“We’re trying to be good neighbors,” said Washburn. He claims that neighborhood response is running “five or six to one” in favor of the oil company’s request for extra work days. He acknowledges, though, that most of the property owners in the surrounding area receive royalty payments from BreitBurn for oil drilled at the site.

Currently, BreitBurn’s request to lift operational restrictions is before the city’s zoning administrator, who on April 6 ordered a 30-day period to invite public comment and to begin an environmental assessment of the site. That comment period closes Friday.

Eric Zala, who lives in an apartment “20 yards and a few pine trees” away from the oil site, says an equitable compromise would be to keep operations as they are, even though he finds the current situation barely acceptable.