• NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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    57 minutes ago

    Hiding oil wells? Wow.

    That shouldn’t be allowed, how can you even have discussions about the problems if people don’t know. You could move beside one and be none the wiser.

    For a beautification reasons I can get it, but they should be plainly marked as oil wells if you’re going to do that.

    Also at the end of the story they talk about people trying to find out who own them and they haven’t been able to for years, thats wild and also terrible.

    I mean it’s all terrible, but wow.

  • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    The La Brea tar pits are a fucking trip too. I thought it would be on the outskirts of LA. But it’s It’s practically downtown, and surrounded by skyscrapers. When you park, there’s asphalt like substance seeping through the pavement in some places. The tar pits are fed by a massive underground oil well. LA is hella weird.

  • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    So, let me be sure that I understand… it’s illegal for me to build an addition to my home, but this is legal?

    At least the USA is consistent, I guess.

    • balderdash@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Nothing to see here, just mass government surveillance, land of the free everybody

  • VitoRobles@lemmy.today
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    1 day ago

    Is this more like Poor LA residents/Poor neighborhoods?

    Because this screams lawsuits, especially in LA which is very big on lawsuits for personal health.

    • Sinthesis@lemmy.today
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      23 hours ago

      The oil derricks were there before it was heavily populated. If I remember right, you could scrape oil off the top of the ground when people first arrived. I guess what I’m trying to say is; the derricks werent built in the poor neighborhoods, the poor neighborhoods were built near the former well sites after they went dry…cheap land. Cover the last few producing wells, build some post-WWII boomer housing and the rest is history.

      https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/oil-derricks-california-old-photos/

      • moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com
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        19 hours ago

        The article says the one near Beverly Hills High school was plugged due to complaints about health from rich white folks, whereas the oil pumps in poorer neighborhoods keep flowing

        • stoly@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Well LA was built up around gold, oil, and cinema. You don’t get LA without those three haha.

          You will commonly be along Wilshire and see a spot where nobody can park or walk because there’s raw petroleum just sitting on the street or sidewalk. It will smell like oil but I think people just accept it.

          • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 day ago

            Is there even anything you can do about the tar pits, though? That’s a natural asphalt seep, and new (smaller) spots are always popping up nearby

            • stoly@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              Petroleum and salt - often found together - are much lighter than the rest of the crust and tend to move up to the surface. SoCal has a lot of these spots. I am sure that people started building up LA long before anyone realized what was down there, or before petroleum even had a use.

  • susieq0044@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Actually, my husband and I live on top of one of those! We discovered this while we were renovating our downstairs bathroom, suddenly this black liquid started to bubble up. We now store it in big drums and use it to heat the dishwashing water and the house, and to drive the car. It may also explain the neck breaking migraines that we both have suffered from over the last 15 years, yet we remain hush-hush about our discovery, because we are in Dire Straits (economically, not the pop band). We would still vote Trump should he run again.

  • JustPlainDave@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    If you watch old movies made in LA you see a lot of wells and I remember wondering what happened to them the first time I went to LA.

    • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      They are still there in the open along La Cienega near a large nature park. The famous finale scene in Beverly Hills Cop II was shot there, and it looks the same today.

    • hansolo@lemmy.today
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      13 hours ago

      Even when I was a kid, out around Montebello they were right on the side of the road.

  • morto@piefed.social
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    1 day ago

    I don’t know if it’s some bias since I just read what it’s about, but that building looks shady as fuck. The kind of place I’d walk around and wonder if there’s some money laundering happening in there.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Semi-related: when I lived in Florida, a store opened up in a strip mall near me that sold nothing but Super-Whippers, $1 plastic whisks. They were never open and they were just 200 feet from three dollar stores and a Publix, all of which sold plastic whisks. I suspect it may have been a money laundering front, but then it’s hard to imagine money-launderers putting that little effort into the task.

      • Poloniousmonk@autistics.life
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        13 hours ago

        @ChickenLadyLovesLife @morto

        I lived in Florida.

        A lot of the criminals are utterly useless there. It totally could have been some kind of front. Maybe they imported the whisks from Columbia or something.

        Remember the Florida Man game. That applies to the general criminal as well as the whacked-out one.

  • Fredselfish@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    We have this problem in Oklahoma the difference here is they built whole suburbs on top of the abandoned wells then move families into them. Worse when they don’t know how many of these wells there are but the numbers are in the high 100,000s.

  • stoly@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    It should also be noted that the area has so much underground petroleum that it leaks out of the streets along the Wilshire corridor, especially near the La Brea Tar Pits.

  • aceshigh@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    This got me thinking. I move every 4-8 years and adapt to the new living conditions. I suspect this hedges against any unknown issues my living conditions have that I’m unaware of. For example, I never filtered my water until I moved someplace where it was necessary and I just kept the habit. Maybe I should have been filtering water my entire life but moving forced me to create this habit.

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        Unrelated, but near my gym there is an actual Radon St. I wonder if people who live there have trouble selling their houses. I suspect it may actually be a positive, as this is a Philadelphia suburb where you occasionally see the confederate flag flying, so the brain damage is already widespread.

    • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pub
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      1 day ago

      Kept trying to get me to download their app. Had to do a workaround just to get to see the image.
      Here it is below, so no one else has to deal with this shit.

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Here it is below, so no one else has to deal with this shit.

        The whole “I had to do something and I didn’t want to, so let me help y’all do it easier” mentality a lot of folk have here is great. I like your attitude.