Remarks by Bob Nelson
492 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 5 of 20
“Those are my questions. All right. With that, seeing no additional questions from the board, we will go ahead and move to public comment. Madam Clerk, how many public commenters do we have today?”
“OK. So we're going to go ahead and get started. That's going to be two minutes apiece. That's going to be about two hours of public comment. Like I said before, we will break about 1030 to give everybody a little bit of a breather and then come back to public comment at that point. Yeah, go ahead and get started.”
“As John heads up here, I'm gonna go ahead and close public comment this time.”
“Thank you. all right we're going to go ahead and take about a 10 minute break we'll be back at 10 45 for the conclusion of public comment thank you All right, welcome back to September 15th meeting the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors here in Santa Maria. We're on Department item number one. Just for a point of Agenda management. We did get started a little earlier on this item and I think some people were told that wasn't going to start till 10. So I'm going to go ahead and open up public comment back out for the next two speakers. So those of you who may have gotten here late will…”
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
“ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU, MADAM CLERK. At this time, we'll have questions of the board. Any board members have any questions that came up during public comment? I want to have questions first before deliberations. Any other questions? Supervisor Hartman, you have a question?”
“All right. Supervisor Capps, did you have any questions for staff before we go into deliberations?”
“You know, there's there's proven no reserves, especially in the Santa Maria Valley. I think the the letter from Asfalto goes over some USGS studies. Is staff aware of? Any type of mental reserves that are. In the Santa Maria Valley or here in the county in general, in terms of their.”
“No, OK, but we do. understand that there are mineral rights out there and quite a bit of oil still under the Santa Maria Valley and throughout some of these different oil fields throughout the Santa Barbara County?”
“Okay. And this board may or may not have the legal ability based on state law to prohibit, but prohibiting oil operations doesn't make the county compensation proof for potential takings, right?”
“OK, so the study will look into potential takings of areas that are no longer accessible because of a ban.”
“Okay. So there's no assessment on what the ban might have as an impact on mineral rights owners? not to my knowledge okay so those that own an asset that's specifically to mineral rights would not be able so we're not looking at that at all that's correct mr chair do we acknowledge that that has any value are we operating under the assumption it has no value”
“Okay. And our actions today would potentially make some of those unretrievable because we can't hit them all with the slant drilling that we mentioned, right?”
“Okay, great. Thank you. I think that is my questions at this time.”
“All right, I think since those are responses to my questions, I have a couple of follow-up questions for that, specifically around the mineral resources. Do we have any idea the percentage of mineral resources that will still be accessible versus those will not be based on this action?”
“Okay, so when you say there's still a significant amount, we just don't know? IN ANY TYPE OF RELATION? I DON'T HAVE THAT KNOWLEDGE. I DO NOT HAVE THAT KNOWLEDGE. IT COULD BE AN INSIGNIFICANT AMOUNT IN COMPARISON.”
“OKAY. ALL RIGHT. AND WHEN YOU SAID THAT YOU'RE NOT REQUIRED TO EVALUATE IMPACTS THAT HAPPEN OUTSIDE THE THINGS LIKE ACCELERATED SCHEDULES OR INVESTMENTS THAT MIGHT LEAD TO WELL ABANDONMENT OR CHANGES ON THE PRODUCTION, THAT WOULD BE WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT WAS IN COUNTY. AND WE HAVEN'T EVALUATED THAT, RIGHT?”
“YEAH, SO MY QUESTION PREVIOUSLY WAS ABOUT WHETHER a ban that would lead to less investment into oil and gas operations how that might impact potential capping of wells other environmental impacts at well sites and in oil fields and we said we had not evaluated that previously no and i”
“OKAY. BUT WE DIDN'T LOOK INTO THAT, THOUGH, EITHER?”
“I UNDERSTAND THAT IT COULD BE A FORESEEABLE IMPACT. OKAY. THANK YOU. ALL RIGHT. THAT WAS...”
“ALL RIGHT. BACK TO THE BOARD FOR DELIBERATIONS.”
“YES, ALTHOUGH YES, TODAY'S YES, TODAY'S DECISION IS ON PHASE ONE.”
“Thank you, Supervisor Levin. If I speak to Supervisor Hartman here for a moment, I appreciate the asphalt idea. I mean, I think that's a great idea to have that conversation. You know, I was trying to kind of kick off that conversation also with a well abandonment strategy was something I was trying to bring to this board previously, because I do think that we can be working with the oil and gas industry. And so I think you're right. We're not agendized on that today, but I do think we probably should come back with another item in the future to talk about what are the things that we can do…”
“No, no, no, we can't. We can't do that today. So we're going to bring back.”
“All right. Thank you, Supervisor Capps. Supervisor Lee.”