California declares emergency over gas leak

Two and a half months after a gas leak at the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility in the San Fernando Valley started, and still has not been stopped, California Gov. Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency.

Briana Mordick, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the emergency regulations “are the right first steps to fixing California’s broken oil and gas regulatory system, but a far cry from the overhaul needed to keep Californians safe from the environmental and public health threats from underground natural gas storage facilities and all underground injection projects”.

The leak was discovered on October 23 at a well used for natural gas storage in Aliso Canyon just outside Los Angeles’ Porter Ranch neighborhood, which is home to more than 30,000 people.

The leak is coming from a damaged well below the surface at the Aliso Canyon Underground Storage Facility.

The gas company is now working on drilling a relief well, which would allow them to plug the leaking well, but that won’t be complete until March.

Cracium said she and others at the meeting urged Brown to be more visible on the issue and to help with a major concern that will last long after the leak is plugged – declining property values. SoCal Gas has insisted that the leaking methane is not damaging to human health, but it has relocated thousands of Porter Ranch residents due to the fact that the odorless, colorless, very flammable methane is treated with chemicals that can cause headaches, nausea, and nosebleeds. SoCalGas has offered to cover the costs of relocation, paying thousands of dollars to each family affected. It has accounted for a fourth of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions from methane.

Brown contends that SoCal Gas should bear all related expenses from the leak.

The gas leak is “one of the most devastating environmental disasters in the history of California”, Los Angeles Councilman Mitchell Englander said Wednesday. Health officials, though, have said the effects of the leak pose no long-term risk to residents.

A state of emergency declaration also brings with it the prospective of a beefed up energy regulatory presence, wherein it calls for more oversight of California’s gas industry, as well as creating a pastiche of new “emergency regulations” heaped on energy storage operators.

The storage field is the second largest such facility in the western United States by capacity.

The governor’s office said in a statement the utility will need to identify how it will stop the leak if a relief well fails to seal it – or if the existing leak worsens.

Pakucko, speaking from a hotel where the gas company had moved him and his girlfriend, said he faced doubts from his community about pressing the governor to declare an emergency.