Porter Ranch gas leak: Are there other places in danger?

It's official: The massive natural gas leak in Porter Ranch has been deemed the worst accidental discharge of greenhouse gases in U.S. history.

The leaking underground storage facility sent more than 95,000 metric tons of methane into the atmosphere, making this site the largest contributor to climate change in the state.

But it's not the only place where horrific methane pollution poses a threat.

Porter Ranch may be the canary in the coal mine for other Southern California sites where housing developments and oil drilling or natural gas storage sites collide. And it reinforces the urgent need to develop a plan for a permanent decommissioning of the site and to transition Los Angeles to 100% clean energy.

What have we learned and what other places may pose a risk?
 
--Montebello Hills in eastern L.A. County is a place riddled with old oil wells and slated for a hillside development that would place 1,200 homes right next to the old wells and dangerously close to a gas processing plant. Sierra Club's Montebello Hills Task Force works to fight the plan that would "flatten" the hills and make the oil-drilling site "home."

--Wilmington, in the South Bay, is slated to become the place where an oil company wants to ship and process 60,000 barrels of Canadian tar sands every day. The plan is to get the diluted bitumen (dilbit) into refineries in the South Bay, a process that would increase pollution and pose a threat to residents who already breathe some of the most polluted air in the country.

Now is the time for strong federal regulations on methane pollution. The EPA recently released their first-ever set of methane regulations, but they aren’t strong enough - only covering new sources of emissions, rather than existing sites, like the Aliso Canyon facility.

Sierra Club knows we can do better. It launched a national campaign for the EPA to strengthen their regulations, using the Aliso Canyon gas leak to illustrate what happens when strong regulations don’t exist.

Lesson learned from Porter Ranch

The Aliso Canyon gas leak, the cause of which still isn't known, began Oct. 23.

This massive leak has been compared to as an "invisible" version of the Deepwater Horizon spill, prompting a declaration of a State of Emergency from Gov. Jerry Brown, emergency legislation and mitigation orders by the local air quality district and state legislators, and the filing of over two dozen lawsuits by those impacted, including lawsuits from Los Angeles City Attorney and California Attorney General.

All told, this massive leak has forced the evacuation of over 12,000 residents, with thousands more on waiting lists, forced the relocation of two local elementary schools, and has led to over 500 calls to the air district from residents reporting symptoms such as bloody noses, nausea and skin rashes.

Because methane is such a potent climate pollutant (more than 80 times worse than carbon dioxide over a 20-year time frame), these emissions are equivalent to the daily climate pollution produced by 4.5 million cars or six coal-fired power plants

Southern California Gas Co. announced Feb. 18 that it had plugged the leak permanently.

Residents of Porter Ranch, many of whom have complained about leaks at the underground gas field for years, want a permanent closure of the facility. Thousands of residents along with Sierra Club activities and other organizations attended rallies and hearings, speaking powerfully for decision makers to recognize the crisis and take action.

The overwhelming consensus in the community is that SoCalGas, the company that manages the gas storage site, cannot be trusted to prevent future leaks - and that this hazardous site, like other drilling sites and storage facilities throughout the city of LA, simply does not belong in a residential neighborhood.

Join us with our Fracking, Oil and Gas Committee to make sure nightmare scenarios like the Porter Ranch gas leak never happen again. Contact Committee Chair David Haake at dhaake@ucla.edu.