Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Monday announced her support for a state bill that would stop the re-opening of the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility until the root cause of a massive leak that occurred there is determined.
“I believe it is important for state regulators and the public to be fully aware of what caused the disastrous natural gas leak last year before proceeding to determine whether the facility is safe to reopen,” Feinstein wrote in a letter to state Sen. Henry Stern, who co-authored SB 57, which would continue a moratorium on gas injections and withdrawals at the Southern California Gas facility until an independent study determines the cause of the leak.
A four-month gas leak at the Porter Ranch facility from October 2015 to February 2016 spewed nearly 100,000 metric tons of methane into the air and displaced thousands of residents.
Officials with the state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources and the California Public Utilities Commission have recommended that gas injections resume but at reduced amounts and lower pressure levels than those requested by SoCalGas.
State regulators held two public meetings last week on a proposal to allow the utility to resume injecting natural gas at Aliso, and one of the meetings was cut short due to shouting by hundreds of San Fernando Valley residents who want to stop the re-opening.
“While well-intentioned, SB 57 does not enhance safety at Aliso Canyon. Instead, it needlessly puts more than 20 million people, thousands of businesses, and critical facilities, like electric generators, refineries, universities, and hospitals, at risk of natural gas and electricity interruption,” SoCalGas said in a statement on Feb. 3.
• RELATED STORY: Public hearing on Aliso Canyon gas field cut short as tempers flare
Feinstein’s action comes as the window for public comment on the nation’s largest natural gas leak came to a close.
The comment period ended at the close of business Monday, the same day a dozen public interest and advocacy groups chided Gov. Jerry Brown on what they say is his spotty environmental record and called for the closing of Aliso Canyon storage field.
Today regulators from DOGGR and the CPUC will start reviewing the written public comment and other documents and eventually make a decision on Aliso Canyo’s fate.
The pubic will also get to review the written comments submitted to DOGGR but it is not known when that will happen.
“We will make the comments available to the public after they are compiled and private information redacted, along with our analysis and responses,” DOGGR spokeswoman Teresa Schilling said in an email.
And there is no time line for a final ruling.
“Safety is the guiding principle and we will take as long as is needed for review,” said Schilling.
• RELATED STORY: LA doctor sounds alarm over effects of Aliso Canyon gas leak
A dozen public interest groups on Monday released a report critical of Brown’s environmental record and called for the halt on operations to continue at the storage facility above Porter Ranch.
The groups’ report claim Brown’s energy regulators are in a “race” to get Aliso Canyon back online and maintain that the governor is falling short on environmental regulation in six out of seven key categories, even though he’s been critical of President Donald Trump’s approach to environmental issues.
“Despite Brown’s national profile for fighting climate change, and even as he serves as a foil to Trump’s anti-environmental policies, Brown is not as green as he could be,” the coalition said in a statement. “His record is ‘murky’ at best on a scale of ‘clean’ to ‘dirty.’”
The report card was put together by Liza Tucker, energy project director for Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog.
Now opponents of the gas field are worried about a rush to judgment.
“It’s clear they want to re-open it, but we don’t need to do that. We have power already. We don’t need this facility. We have plenty of natural gas via pipelines,” said Tucker.
• RELATED STORY: SoCalGas says Aliso Canyon gas field is ready to reopen
One of the mitigation measures implemented after well SS-25 failed in October 2015 was requiring the gas company to calculate supply and demand on a daily basis rather than forecasting it 30 days in advance.
Regulators and gas company officials speculated that with Aliso Canyon down there could be power outages in the summer and natural gas shortages in the winter.
“Guess what? We had no blackouts,” Tucker said.
The report claims that Brown has expanded the burning of heat-trapping natural gas and nurtured oil drilling and
hydraulic fracturing while stifling efforts to protect the public from harm.
For example, it says that under Brown, the number of active onshore oil and gas wells jumped by 23 percent since the year before he was elected Governor.
“We’re not flunking Gov. Brown. We’re giving him like a C minus or a D plus. I think if he reopens Aliso he gets an F,” Tucker said.
Brown has kept a low profile regarding the leak. After the well blew, the governor did not declare a state of emergency until early January of 2016.
Evan Westrup, Brown’s spokesman, responded to the criticism with a terse email.
“Same drivel, different day,” he wrote.
Granada Hills resident Jane Flower, who lives just over a mile away from the SoCalGas field, said on a conference call that she is still suffering symptoms from the massive leak. She and her husband Bernard voluntarily evacuated the community for seven months.
She believes that the community is still contaminated.
“I was very excited to come home. Eight hours after I got hom me my stomach blew up and it looked like I was pregnant,” she said.
State Sen. Henry Stern, D-Canoga Park, has introduced SB-57, which would block regulators from ruling on Aliso Canyon until Texas-based Blade Energy Partners completes its analysis of the root cause of the leak.
On Friday evening, SoCalGas said in an email that it would oppose Stern’s bill, noting that a federal report said the leak happened in the well’s outer casing. As a result, gas can now only be extracted through the well tube, a safer method, they said.
But Blade’s work is not yet finished.
“We understand that some members of the community are concerned about the status of the root-cause analysis, and we appreciate that some in the Legislature are trying to address those concerns. However, Senate Bill 57 is unnecessary,” said SoCalGas in its email. “To protect the reliability of natural gas and electricity services for the more than 20 million people that we serve in communities across Southern California, we respectfully oppose SB 57.”
Staff writer Greg Wilcox contributed to this story.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
