The people of Tupman, the community closest to the BP venture’s planned hydrogen power plant, aren’t content with the state of their town. They complain about the hole-riddled streets, the trucks that barrel through without stopping for pedestrians and the general lack of anything to do for children. The power plant project has the potential to change things around here, but residents don’t agree whether the change will be for the better.
Will Evans/California WatchChristina Harvey stands outside her Tupman home with her niece, Jordan Freeman.
Christina Harvey, 32, is worried about a catastrophe. “We got the oil companies over there and the plant coming in there – when something does happen, we’re all gone,” she said, standing outside her trailer with her niece. “We’re not going to have any safeness out here. We’re going to be out of luck if something does happen.”
Jeremiah Craven, a 20-year-old construction worker, sees the project as the town’s chance to develop. “We’d be able to upgrade the town,” he said. “We’d get a lot of traffic coming in and out of Tupman.” Craven is hopeful that Tupman might eventually get its own store and some money to fix the potholes that he sometimes fills with sand. He doesn’t mind that BP is involved. “I don't care who does it,” he said. “I have nothing against BP. I can’t say that (the Gulf spill) was BP’s fault. A machine’s not perfect.”
A couple of streets over, Rick Stark, 54, doesn’t like the project one bit. A former diesel mechanic who lives on a fixed income, Stark is outraged that the government decreased his monthly payments. “They don’t give us no stimulus and then pour money into that? Hell no. Give more money to them rich people? No,” he said. “It won’t help us. All it’s gonna do is hurt us.”
Will Evans/California WatchRick Stark is angry that the government is spending money on projects like the BP venture.
Further down the street, property manager Barbara Mora isn’t any more enthusiastic about the plant. “What about our farmland that’s been there all these years? What about the dangers? What about the air? I don’t see how it benefits us,” she said, wearing sunglasses and sandals from a trip to Pismo Beach. “It’s all about the money, baby. The rich get richer, and the poor stay poor, and the middle class pays.”
Her father, 70-year-old Orbin Yates, hopes the project brings jobs to the locals and cheaper electricity to everyone. But, he says, “probably the bad is going to outweigh the good.” Yates is a mechanic consultant who knows something about the technology the plant will use. He once worked on the Elk Hills Oil Field and, on another project, injected gas into the ground to recover unreachable oil in Indonesia. “I don’t think we ought to be subsidizing them,” he said. “What is the benefit of that gift that we’re giving to them? Is it really going to help us?”
Will Evans/California WatchCarla Cota lives with her family, including sons Pedro (left) and David, near the proposed power plant.
Just outside Tupman, Carla Cota, 33, lives with her family just across the street from the onion fields that are part of the area Hydrogen Energy California would control. Her husband works on the nearby cotton farm. Cota said no one had contacted her about the new plant. She doesn’t understand why the government is putting up money for it. “The government says the economy is bad and there is no money,” she said in Spanish, as tractors harvested onions across the street. “And then they go spending money.”
A few miles away, Beau Antongiovanni, 33, farms wheat, alfalfa and pistachios. It pains him to see prime farmland taken over by the power plant. “Why destroy productive ground to put that project there when there’s unproductive ground where the project could go?” he said, wearing a blue bandana over shoulder-length hair, standing next to his pistachio orchards. Antongiovanni thinks about the petroleum coke that will be trucked in from Los Angeles and elsewhere and says, “I’m not sure that’s getting to the point of being more environmentally friendly. Just call it what it is – another way to make money.”
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