After a meeting Thursday, between Exxon Mobil officials and residents of the Mayflower subdivision that was most affected by a March 29 oil spill, some residents said their neighbors’ demands were getting out of hand and others said it is Exxon Mobil that isn’t being fair.
Officials discussed concerns about the company’s proposal to purchase property at the two-hour meeting, the second private meeting with residents in three days.
Only residents, property owners or landlords of the 62 homes in the Northwoods subdivision, their attorneys and two representatives of the state attorney general’s office were allowed at the meeting.
Toni Perry, who lives at 24 Shade Tree Lane, about four houses from where a pipeline released 210,000 gallons of heavy crude oil more than a month ago, said she’s pleased with Exxon Mobil’s efforts. She left Thursday’s meeting 45 minutes after it began because other residents were getting out of hand, she said.
“Everybody is just so into, ‘What can I get out of this? What can you give me? Give it to me now!’” she said. “[Exxon Mobil officials] are doing everything they can to help us. I have no complaints. They answer all my questions. My attorney didn’t even come with me tonight because he is so comfortable with what they are doing.”
But Teri Byers and Curt Johnson said they aren’t pleased with the company’s Property Purchase and Price Protection Program.Their house borders one of the 22 evacuated homes, but under the program they don’t qualify for the direct-buy option.
Thursday’s meeting was a “dog and pony show,” Johnson said, and officials were concerned with their public image and talked in circles, he said. The couple left half an hour before the meeting ended.
Officials aren’t considering the loss of community that will take place, Johnson said. Those who stay in the subdivision will lose many of their neighbors who choose to sell their homes.
Johnson and Byers were one of three couples who left the meeting saying officials didn’t understand the big picture.
Danny and Pamela Bell, who live on Smoke Tree Lane in a home also not evacuated, had their house up for sale before the oil spill. They said several residents are concerned that the subdivision is one of the only places in Mayflower with upper middle-class houses, so to move into a similar house residents will have to leave the city.
In surrounding towns such as Conway and Maumelle, they said, the same home could cost $25 more per square foot than a home in Mayflower.
“Exxon should make up that difference,” Pamela Bell said. “We are leaving [the subdivision] but we can’t replace [the house] for [the same price] we got there.”
Some residents, however, are choosing to stay. Perry went back to her home with her 16-year-old son and her husband two weeks after the spill. Aside from the rotten-egg the first few days and heavy equipment still in the area, her life is back to normal, she said.
Mackey and Diann Strange also plan to stay in their home at 12 S. Starlite Road. Mackey Strange is a retired pipeline worker and much of their family works with oil companies in Texas. The spill is just something that happened and Exxon Mobil is doing everything in its ability to correct the issue, Mackey Strange said.
Neither Perry nor the Stranges live in one of the 22 homes evacuated after the spill. No one from those homes has returned, but residents of 15 have been cleared to go back, said Nicolás Medina, Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co.’s public and government-affairs manager.
Residents of at least six of those homes have decided to begin the process of going back, which involves a 24-hour ventilation period, getting lab results of the air quality samples which could take seven to 10 days, and approval from the state Department of Health.
The ventilation process was started in one home Thursday, meaning the first residents could be back by next week at the earliest.
Exxon officials met Tuesday in another private meeting with just the residents in the 22 evacuated homes. The residents were introduced to Joint Incident Command officials, given a detailed explanation of what the re-entry process is like and shown photos of what their subdivision looks like now, Medina said.
That meeting and Thursday’s weren’t open to reporters or the public “because most residents have personal questions,” and officials want them to be comfortable and able to ask anything, Medina said.
Exxon Mobil’s property-purchase plan has four options: Subdivision residents can accept a one-time payment to compensate for the loss of home value because of the spill.
Residents of the 22 evacuated homes can accept a direct-buy offer.
Subdivision residents can list their homes for sale and if they are not sold within 120 days, Exxon Mobil will buy them.
Exxon Mobil will pay for moving expenses and three months of rent for tenants who rent property in the subdivision that the owner has sold to the company.
Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said Wednesday that the plan is too restrictive and doesn’t adequately address the residents living on a cove of Lake Conway where oil has reached and workers have been every day since the spill.
Exxon Mobil’s Vice President Karen Tyrone said she couldn’t comment on McDaniel’s reactions because she hasn’t fully read the releases his office has sent out. Whether residents who live on the cove of the lake were affected just as much as those in the Northwoods subdivision is “a judgment call,” she said.
The company’s focus is to restore the subdivision to what it was before the spill and residents of the cove are being addressed through the company’s claims process, she said.
Two representatives with the attorney general’s Consumer Response Team who were at the meeting Thursday wouldn’t comment afterward.
The office created a toll free hot line Thursday for “spill-related consumer concerns,” according to a news release. The number is (855) 388-6555.
The release said air-quality samples the attorney general’s office had taken inside 14 homes in the subdivision were consistent with other samples released by Exxon and state agencies. The samples either showed no contaminants or a low concern for contaminants.
McDaniel is still concerned with reports of headaches and nausea, the release said.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 05/10/2013