I’m standing next to World Famous Curley’s Café looking at two active oil wells that happen to be located smack dab in the middle of the parking lot, cars drive in and maneuver for their spaces around them. These pumpjacks, as they are known, look like giant metal rocking horses bobbing up and down as they beat out a steady rhythm of ke-chunk noises, sucking the oil from the vertical well beneath them into some underground storage tank. Across the street there is another well next to a McDonalds drive-thru, and up on the hill the wells are scattered in and around an upscale housing development. There are hundreds of wells everywhere; they are next to businesses, houses and whatever happens to be built next to them. This is Signal Hill.

The first time I ever heard of Signal Hill was in regards to what I was told was the place to get the best view of nearby Long Beach, and it is a great view. For many years I thought Signal Hill was neighborhood in Long Beach, but recently found out it is a city unto its own with a population of over 11,000 residents, and surrounded on all sides by the actual City of Long Beach, its autonomy the result of avoiding Long Beach’s zoning restrictions and per-barrel oil tax.

In 1921 oil was discovered in Signal Hill, and the Long Beach Oil Field quickly became one of the most productive oil fields in the world. Although the field encompassed the surrounding area, Signal Hill was at its center and was by far the most productive part of the field. At one time it had over one hundred oil wells rising up all along its slopes giving it the nickname of Porcupine Hill.

Over the years the Long Beach Oil Field has lost most of its productivity, but it still has over 290 active wells scattered around Long Beach, Signal Hill still being at its epicenter.

If you’ve lived in Los Angeles for any period you know that it is an oil rich region, in LA County there are over 5,000 active or idle oil wells. You can still see the crude bubbling up at the La Brea Tar Pits, and driving along La Cienega Boulevard to the airport will take you right through the Inglewood Oil Field, one of the largest urban oil fields in the country. When there is an unsightly oil well in the middle of a neighborhood, they usually have some form of covering over it like the artfully painted tower over the dormant oil well next to Beverly Hills High School.

That’s what makes Signal Hill so different, it is the complete lack of interest in hiding or covering up the wells, they are there to see, fully active, continually pumping right in the middle of its residential and commercial neighborhoods, usually only separated by a small chain link fence if at all.

Then there is the smell; it was hard not to miss the pungent smell of crude oil that emanated from all the wells I stood next to.

Oil wells are known to emit a number of carcinogens including benzene, formaldehyde and methane, and oil companies often add their own chemicals such as crystalline silica, methanol and hydrofluoric acid. These chemicals pose serious health problems, and while the research is ongoing, many residents in oil field communities report a range of issues including cancer and respiratory problems.

There is a bill (AB-345) currently stalled in the California legislature that would restrict new drilling and oil production within 2500 feet of homes, schools and other inhabited structures. Oil money is trying to keep it stalled, but even if it passes it won’t address the situation for the current wells and its adjacent structures, and for a place like Signal Hill the chance of new production on a depleting oil field is extremely low.

It is hard to think about living next to or near an active oil well, yet over 500,000 people in LA County live within a half a mile (2640 feet) of one. I do! Do you?