From Muting to Withdrawing: Fighting to Shut Down Aliso Canyon in Year Two of COVID
2021 was a busy year when it came to the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility in northern Los Angeles. Hopefully in the new year, frustrated residents will be seeing the light at the end of tunnel when it comes to closing the facility that caused the worst gas disaster in U.S. history.
STILL IN SEARCH OF A HEALTH STUDY
The year began with an emphasis on the health study that was mandated by the 2018 Aliso Canyon consent decree (the health study is listed in the Supplemental Environmental Projects section). The residents who were appointed to the Community Advisory Group (CAG), by neighborhood councils or the LA County Department of Public Health (DPH) believed strongly that the research should be science-based, community-centric, and free of political influence. The group fought to put a majority of independent voices on the Scientific Oversight Committee (SOC), including a clinician. Our choice was Dr. Jeffrey Nordella, a local medical doctor, who had started studying health effects on the community a short time after the blowout began.
As someone who is an at-large member of the CAG, I can attest to the frustrations and concern among a majority of our group. In fact, starting with the October 2020 meeting with DPH, we took a monthly vote on whether we feel we have confidence in the study’s path. Our intent for this polling was “to provide a constructive perspective of the CAG’s awareness of community sentiment and desires.” At that time, seven members voted no confidence, two yes, and four were absent. The next month, eight voted no, one yes, two conditional, and two were absent.
Representatives from the DPH team had shown up at neighborhood council meetings in December 2020 and January 2021 to supposedly give an update on the study’s progress, but instead gave a statement that was obviously written by the county counsel that simply gave a history of how the study came to be. The two, Cristina Vega, Community Outreach Specialist, and Christine Contreras, the director of DPH’s Toxicology and Environmental Assessment Branch, often didn’t have answers to questions asked by residents, or more likely, unwilling to give replies before checking with county counsel.
After Dr. Nordella spoke at a Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council meeting, DPH gave the SOC members a deadline of February 3rd to sign off on a charter, which would require the scientific experts to get any public appearances vetted by DPH first. Two members of the SOC, Nordella, and Dr. Christopher Sistrunk, said they could not ethically sign this agreement. DPH officials contended that confidentiality was a factor for pushing this charter which was written a year after the SOC was formed. With Nordella’s removal, the SOC was without a clinician (the one remaining MD had not seen patients, according to his Curriculum Vitae).
Some of the CAG members were sensing a red flag going up when the January 25th meeting was postponed until February 3rd so as “to accommodate various scheduling conflicts.” When Vega sent out an agenda for the meeting two days before, but without the agenda items the CAG requested, an even more redder flag went up the flagpole.
The concerns became well founded when the CAG found themselves muted from the beginning of the meeting. Residents joined CAG members in the chat, demanding their representatives be taken off mute. This dissing was mentioned by many, who felt that the CAG members were more responsive than the DPH to the need of the community for a true health study. Some even asked that Nordella and Sistrunk be allowed to speak about being thrown off the SOC.
The only time that CAG and community members were allowed to talk was on the say-so of DPH and very briefly. (In previous CAG meetings, the members weren’t automatically muted by DPH.) The CAG requested the chance to conduct our monthly poll, but as we didn’t get the change to do so verbally, we took the poll in the chat. The results: Nine no confidence, one yes, one abstention, and two absent. The consensus on the chat, which included Dr. Sistrunk, was that this should not be considered a CAG meeting, but instead a DPH one.
Dr. Muntu Davis, Los Angeles County Health Officer, announced that the CAG will now meet on a quarterly basis, rather than monthly, and that all subcommittees will be “paused.” In essence, much of the work CAG members have done concerning the cancer registry and other issues will be ended.
Months later, several neighborhood councils in the northern San Fernando Valley and near the facility also voted a lack of confidence in the upcoming health study.
The CAG received a tone-deaf email with a comment by Contreras on February 17th. “As we kick off the new year, I want to thank the northwest San Fernando Valley community for their feedback and participation in the Community Opinion survey, Virtual Town Hall, and ongoing feedback that has helped inform the draft Health Study Goals and Priorities. We have important work ahead and we will be broadening our efforts to solicit and include the input of the affected community.”
On the same day, the CAG received an email from Vega that included “a summary of the discussion” that happened at the February 3rd meeting. Her tone and wording seemed to indicate a misunderstanding of the messages in the meeting’s chat.
At the next meeting on March 22nd, once again CAG members weren’t free to speak and deemed the February and March meetings to be “DPH” meetings, rather than CAG meetings.
When the DPH issued a Goals and Priorities statement on March 18th, a majority of the CAG felt it was overly broad and seemed to throw in everything but the kitchen sink. As the Goals and Priorities will be used to foment the Request for Proposal (RFP) form to send to prospective research teams, what we read didn’t match the community’s desire for a community-centric and clinical health study. Because the DPH team said that the selected research team would design the study, the community became concerned that there would be an emphasis on an environmental assessment, which would not bother with examinations of the affected residents. It could become a whitewash of the health effects caused by the toxic soup emitted by Aliso.
The goals and priorities statement was supposedly based on SOC feedback as well as on community research. The latter consisted of the CAG meetings, submissions to a feedback log, comments given at the September 30th town hall, participation in neighborhood council meetings, feedback through regular email communications and a community opinion survey conducted last fall.
Yet, the feedback log referred to is no longer accessible, the town hall was poorly attended, and the Community Advisory Group, found the initial survey vastly unrepresented the geographical area most profoundly affected by the blowout. After the CAG voiced dissatisfaction with the way subjects were found by the consulting firm, an additional survey was made accessible online, and promoted by neighborhood councils in the affected area and by social media.
Here is my article concerning the poor outreach regarding the DPH town hall, and my article about the survey debacle.
Of the reports that DPH said it’s prepared to hand over to whatever research team is selected, none of them were about the actual health of residents. And of the analyses and other reports, the one list that still is missing continues to be a comprehensive list of every chemical and material used at the Aliso site. The county refuses to issue a subpoena to SoCalGas for such information, contending that it wasn’t needed for a scientific study.
The advisory group urged residents to send in feedback requesting that the Goals and Priorities statement be revised to reflect the need for a true health study and not a risk assessment.
The CAG asked to see a finalized goals and priorities statement and the RFP. We were turned down on both counts. DPH claimed confidentiality was vital, so that some researchers wouldn’t get an advantage, but didn’t answer when it was pointed out that the AQMD makes RFPs public. (That agency’s RFP for the proposed $1-million “health study” was made available in the agenda for the AQMD Administrative Committee meeting on October 12, 2018, and the one for the BTEX monitoring system was included in the agenda for the April 2, 2021.)
The CAG and community felt there was a lack of transparency when it comes to the DPH. If the Goals and Priorities was revised prior to completing the RFP, it’s not known as only the draft G&P is on the DPH website. A major concern was that we will only know what the study design will ultimately be, when it is announced publicly, and set in stone.
In the fall, DPH released their summary of the public’s feedback to the Goals and Priorities statement. The report referred to the 412 emails that gave a “form” response, but this was the statement that was written by the CAG, which many respondents used as they felt it represented their views.
The last meeting for 2021 with the CAG and the community was scheduled for September 27th. But during the meeting, a clock was visibly ticking down to the end of the meeting. Whoever (either from DPH or its consulting firm Katz & Associates) had set up this meeting used a personal Zoom account, rather than a professional account that wouldn’t have a time limit. Because of the confusion involved, a continuation of this meeting was rescheduled for two more dates in October 4th and 14th.
After an apology by a Katz staffer for the snafu the month before, the October 4th meeting featured Captain Fernando Florez from the LA County HazMat division, discussing the 2019 catch basin fire, the CAG’s Craig Galanti giving a rundown of the community’s discontent with DPH and that there is deep concerns that the study will not be clinically-based, DPH’s Kris Vaculik, Research Development Manager, taking about the public feedback on the Goals and Priorities statements, and DPH’s Contreras giving a breakdown of expenditures to date.
As for that last item, CAG and residents had started asking for a full accounting of funds spent against the $25 million reserved for the study, ever since the second CAG meeting in the fall of 2019. We were stunned to find out that from about $25,600,000 (including accrued interest) in the fund, more than $2-million was spent so far. More than half of that was spent on community engagement, about a quarter on SOC coordination, and the rest on “formative research” and contractor administrative costs.
The second meeting covered the CBC and cancer registry studies that were on the CAG’s wish list. The presentation using data from Quest Diagnostics included only some categories: hemoglobin, hematocrit, white blood count, and platelet levels. The results for the other categories, BUN, creatinine, AST, and ALT, were inexplicably not presented.
The cancer surveillance analysis plan was discussed. CAG had long expressed problems with using USC data, which uses LA County for the control group, rather than an area in which there’s no gas or oil facilities nearby. DPH wanted to stick with this plan, but said it was agreeable to have an independent statistician look at the data.
As for prior meetings, it took several requests in 2020 and 2021 from the CAG to get DPH to finally upload permanent recordings and summaries of its meetings with the CAG. On October 7th, DPH started a You Tube channel for uploading meeting recordings. Of the SOC meetings, only the summary for June 28, 2020, meeting has been uploaded to the DPH website. In order to view the RFP, a prospective research team must fill out a request form with an email address. Even though the document is no longer confidential, community members, including the CAG, are unable to see it.
An October 15th email from Vega said that all future meetings will be on hold during the RFP process. Many on the CAG and community members who have been following the drama have wondered if there would be any more meetings, and if so, what’s the use as DPH seemed to be ignoring the residents anyway.
The CAG had started its own website in June 2020, to provide information regarding health concerns as give a link to our petition asking the county to issue a subpoena to SoCalGas to request a comprehensive chemical list.
After the disastrous meeting with DPH in February 2021, the CAG decided to hold mini town halls, each one focusing in on one or two topics, and uploaded them to our website. Eight of town halls were held between late February and mid-April.
Here’s my article from March 31, 2021 about the community’s distrust of the DPH-administered health study. Because of this distrust and a desire on the part of community leaders to have a community-oriented study, three members of the CAG decided to create a nonprofit Environmental Health Research to explore a health study that would determine how the polytoxic emissions affected the physical health of those living in the affected zone, the northern San Fernando Valley.
The three co-founders held a townhall on September 29th and have also talked to some of the local neighborhood councils.
According to the DPH website, the health study project is currently in the “Research Solicitations” stage at this time.
DEAL OR NO DEAL
On September 27th, there was a bombshell announcement that plaintiff and SoCal Gas lawyers in the mass tort reached an agreement to settle the lawsuit ahead of the trial, which was scheduled to begin in early 2022. The maximum amount would be for $1.8 billion, but specifics, as to how much the lawyers stood to receive through common-benefit and other fees, and what amount was remaining for the plaintiffs weren’t mentioned.
Some of the approximately 36,000 residents involved in the lawsuit were happy that an offer was made, but many others wanted to know more information before deciding to accept that offer or allow the case to proceed to a trial. Some residents showed up for a rally the next day after the announcement to express their doubts and objections about the offer, which was announced just 26 days before the 6th anniversary of the blowout.
Many of those taking the microphone discussed the serious health conditions, including cancer, they had endured during and after the blowout. Some experienced frequent, often daily, occurrences of headaches, asthmatic attacks, and nosebleeds.
“Let’s put this in front of a jury, let’s see all the information. That number 1.8 is going to look really small after we go to trial. A jury of our peers in this climate with what gas and oil is doing to this world, they are going to get what they deserve and we’re going to get something closer to what we deserve.” Porter Ranch resident and activist Craig Galanti said about the settlement offer.
Galanti criticized the sudden announcement by the lawyers. “It was a deal cut in a board room or over some zoom meeting that really didn’t involve the community’s feelings, thoughts, concerns or their estimate of damages.” He added, “Now we’re going to see our plaintiff attorneys bargaining with us to try to come to a settlement that seems like a very slippery slope. What’s right and what’s truly just for the community. It’s potentially the path of least resistance for the attorneys. That’s a dangerous slope where justice won’t really prevail.”
Galanti, Save Porter Ranch co-founder Matt Pakucko, and Andrew Krowne told reporters that calculating the average payout to plaintiffs, including taking out lawyer fees and expenses and taxes, would leave some with perhaps $20,000 or $25,000. As this is a mass tort, and not a class action suit, these payments will not be an equal share, but based on damages that will be determined by two retired judges. In addition, the lead lawyer or lawyers will receive a common-benefit fee off the top and each law firm will then get their percentage share after plaintiff awards are determined.
Aliso Mom Alliance co-founder Helen Attai summarized the six years of frustration for the initial relocation and continuing doctor appointments, “How can you put a price on that?”
Here’s my article about the settlement and the rally.
Since the announcement, some of the law firms representing plaintiffs held “town hall” meetings that were available for their clients only. As a non-plaintiff, I have to wonder what information was not being presented at these meetings. Did law firms give both pros and cons for accepting or rejecting the offer? What rights (e.g. If a resident develops a life-threatening disease that could be associated with Aliso or for another suit for future blowouts) will be signed away if accepting the settlement offer?
And if the 97 per cent threshold among residents accepting the offer is met and the trial isn’t conducted, what happens to the documents turned over to plaintiff lawyers during discovery? During that process, SoCalGas lawyers attempted more than once to avoid delivering request documents. In February 2020, Judge Carolyn Kuhl fined the gas company $525,610 for withholding 197,513 documents. And that was on top of another fine applied in August 2019.
What happens to the testimony given by 470 witnesses during depositions taken over the course of 585 days?
Some of the sources of known information were the first deposition, taken on May 1, 2018. of the chemical engineer assigned to testing for specific chemicals at the wells, the brief for the Los Angeles firefighters’ lawsuit announced in late 2018, the brief regarding the residents’ quest for restitution under Marsey’s Law from the governmental criminal case against the gas company, and the brief for the lawsuit started by Ken Bruno, a Program Manager for the Safety and Enforcement Division (SED) of the CPUC.
Among the revelations were that SoCalGas and Sempra management knew that residents and first responders were exposed to dangerous levels of PCBs and uranium as well as other toxic material found on the site.
One executive admitted that SoCalGas announced the leaking in October 2015 only after news reports of people getting sick began airing. Paul Smith, who was in charge of the emergency services group, admitted they didn’t test the gas even after residents were calling in and complaining about the odors. The storage manager Glenn LaFevers explained that chemicals were added to pipelines to prevent the formation of bacteria. He added that SoCalGas disposed of toxic waste by injecting it back into the field after the gas is filtered for distribution. Safety officer Sonia Rodriquez testified that the safety data sheets provided to Cal OSHA included natural gas condensates that are highly toxic due to toluene and other chemicals.
In addition, the gas company knew the federal government had previously determined natural gas contained 353 toxic chemicals that cause adverse health effects.
The presence of uranium at concentrations above the maximum contaminant levels set by the EPA near well SS-25 was verified by a report prepared by Geosyntec. The report was utilized by Blade Energy while working on the root cause analysis.
Furthermore, SoCalGas had designated Vice-President of Customer Services, Gillian Wright, as the person most qualified to testify about health impacts from the blowout. But Wright had no understanding of the actual test data from Aliso Canyon showing high levels of known cancer-causing substances. Nor could she rightly testify about basic information regarding the health impacts.
In part 5 of my series on Aliso and Public Agency Corruption under the ALISO IN THE COURTROOM heading, I reference some of the depositions of SoCalGas executives.
Given these snippets from depositions that are known, one has to wonder what is below the tip of a giant iceberg of knowledge about the incompetence and mismanagement of the Aliso Canyon facility.
It could be that if the offer is turned down by more than four percent of the plaintiffs, SoCalGas may present a higher offer, just to keep a trial from happening that will reveal potentially damaging information to its defense.
FIGHTING AN INCREASE
Back on December 11, 2019, council member John Lee introduced a resolution calling for the closure of the gas facility. It was immediately referred to the Rules, Elections, and Intergovernmental Relations Committee. Despite many calls and public comments, it wasn’t waived out of the committee, which held nine meetings since December 2019, until May 2021. The city council finally heard the item on May 19th, and voted 14–0–1 (Paul Koretz was absent that day)…17 months later!
Lee introduced another resolution on August 8th, calling on the CPUC not to increase storage at Aliso, but it was referred to the same Rules Committee, which has met twice since then. To date, the motion is still languishing in committee limbo.
On the other hand, the County Board of Supervisors voted on July 27th to immediately send a letter to the CPUC opposing any increase.
Despite the letter from the County Board of Supervisors, letters from Congressmember Brad Sherman and Senator Henry Stern, and more than 60 public comments given during the CPUC meeting on November 4th, the agency voted to increase storage at Aliso to a maximum of 41.16 billion cubic feet.
This was the day after FTI presented its shortfall analysis, scenarios modeled to replace Aliso Canyon, and its recommended portfolio of actions in a workshop in this proceeding. The CPUC refers to FTI as an independent consulting firm, but FTI has shown itself to be pro-fossil fuels and showed during the workshops for this proceeding its bias for delaying the closure of Aliso until at least 2035.
Given the green light from the CPUC, SoCalGas wasted little time in injecting more gas to get up to the 41.16 mark. In the month of December, a total of 6,029 million cubic feet has been withdrawn from the wells per the SoCalGas Envoy site.
In the last couple of months of 2021, some elected officials reiterated their stance on closing Aliso.
On November 2nd, the two US senators from California, Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla issued a joint statement calling for the closure. A side note: Senator Padilla and his family moved to the Porter Ranch area in 2015 and were forced to relocate during the blowout.
Congress member Brad Sherman issued a press release on November 4th against the increase of capacity at the site and for the closure.
Congress member Mike Garcia, whose district contains the facility, did not say anything about the sixth anniversary or the proposed increase of capacity, whether in a press release or on social media.
Assemblywoman Suzette Valladares, called the expansion of gas storage is “unnecessary and irresponsible,” in In the Santa Clarita Signal after the CPUC vote. She shared this message via Facebook and Twitter, but didn’t issue a separate press release.
Council member John Lee did mention the capacity increase in his October 29th newsletter with links informing residents how to call in to the CPUC meeting or submit written comments to the docket for the proceeding. But most of mentions regarding Aliso in his fall newsletters referred to the public comment period for proposed regulations for gas facilities as a result of SB-463, Senator Stern’s bill regarding chemical inventory that was signed into law in 2019.
He mentioned the passage of his resolution calling for the closure of Aliso in May. But after that, silence until October, when he mentioned the offer to settle the mass tort.
County Supervisor Kathryn Barger didn’t mention Aliso at all on her website nor on social media for the year.
State senator Henry Stern sent two letters on August 13th and November 4th to the CPUC regarding the increase of storage. In his second letter, he said Cal-Gem has yet to conduct an independent seismic study, but instead was “relying on SoCalGas’ own seismic analysis that fails to account for the changes to fault permeability after a large earthquake with updated modeling on well casing failures.”
THE PROCEEDING THAT CAN SHUT ALISO DOWN
The CPUC vote was tied in with the Order Instituting Investigation (OII) Proceeding number I1702002. This proceeding started in 2017 because of Senate Bill 380 to determine the feasibility of minimizing or eliminating the use of the gas storage facility.
Thiry two written comments have been sent in to the docket to date, with 31 of those requesting that the increase not happen, and that instead Aliso should be closed. Many comments went further and spoke in favor of transitioning off of the use of fossil fuels
The administrative law judge offered a timeline on November 10th for significant upcoming events concerning this proceeding which a report in January 2022 by FTI and Gas Supply Consulting (GSC), more evidentiary hearings in April, and a proposed decision by the summer. Many of the parties in this proceeding asked for the evidentiary hearings to be held in November instead.
Note, as mentioned in the previous section, that FTI Consulting Inc. was hired by the CPUC to serve as consultants on phase 3 of the OII. But this firm has a history of not only working on behalf of the oil and gas industries, but also utilizing iffy methods such as creating astroturf profiles to help promote the use of fossil fuels.
Even GSC has a bias toward preserving the use of methane gas. At one workshop for this proceeding, a GSC staffer, in response to a question about continuing to push gas options given the move to decarbonization, said “It makes sense to replace [natural] with [natural] gas.”
On December 14th, some community leaders involved with Aliso held an ex parte meeting with outgoing CPUC commissioner Martha Guzman-Aceves, some members of her staff, senator Stern and his energy policy advisor. Matt Pakucko, Kyoko Hibino, Helen Attai, Jane Fowler, Alex Nagy, Issam Najm, and this writer informed Guzman-Aceves about the concerns and the frustrations the community has because the proceeding has been ignoring how Aliso is affecting the health and safety of residents. Those on the call recounted personal and family health problems, which are occurring while the facility leaks methane and chemicals on a continuous basis. Stern mentioned that SoCalGas had been allowed to resume operations before the completion of the root-cause analysis and without completing an independent seismic evaluation. We also talked about how ten staffers and teachers at Castlebay Lane elementary school had been diagnosed with cancer, with seven of them dying.
The residents asserted that continuing to put 1.5 million residents at risk until California’s decarbonization goals are met was unconscionable. Yet, despite calls to the CPUC from Governors Brown and Newsom, and other elected officials and bodies, the agency has not set a deadline or even a plan to close the Aliso facility.
Besides this OII, there were two investigations that were opened in June 2019 as a result of the Blade Energy Root Cause Analysis which showed that SoCalGas caused the 2015 blowout through its negligence.
The first one (I.19–06–014) concerned whether the safety culture of SoCalGas and its parent company Sempra Energy fostered a workplace culture that contributed to the blowout. The safety culture proceeding was quiet for 2021, with the only action was a ruling to extend the statutory deadline to December 31, 2022.
The second one (I.19–06–016) concerned whether SoCalGas should be sanctioned for causing the blowout to happen. As with the safety culture proceeding, a ruling was also issued to extend the statutory deadline until the end of 2022. But there was still plenty of action during 2021.
Quite a bit of talk centered around a laptop that was stolen in December 2015 of a then-employee of Boots and Coots, a subsidiary of Halliburton, which was hired by SoCalGas on October 27, 2015, to conduct well kills to end the blowout.
Daniel Walzel, who left Boots and Coots in Oct 2020, had previously given testimony for the proceeding, but had not mentioned the well kill modeling. The SED and California Public Advocates Office requested further testimony from him, but Halliburton got a Texas judge to rule that the CPUC can’t order him to testify further.
In its August brief, the Cal Advocates state that Halliburton does have offices in California.
The LA Times recounted this bizarre story about laptop theft from a Best Buy parking lot in Houston. Certainly, a new twist in the dog ate my homework excuse.
The importance of the laptop was that supposedly it contained, according to Boots and Coots, transient modeling, which was mentioned on several occasions in documents for this proceeding.
The Blade Report had concluded that the “direct cause” of the length of time (111 days) for the blowout was the lack of transient modeling for the first six well kill attempts.
But Boots and Coots didn’t mention the transient well kill modeling until the March 20, 2020 testimony. The gas company’s attorneys alleged that the utility first learned about the theft on February 21, 2020.
In its August 25, 2021 motion, Cal Advocates mentioned that Halliburton had pled guilty to “unauthorized destruction” of well kill modeling evidence during an investigation into the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Not only was this watchdog group concerned about the possible loss of evidence regarding well kills of SS-25, but wanted to ensure that SoCalGas will allow for future witness testimony and data responses until the proceeding is closed for good.
In other requests, CPUC’s Safety and Enforcement Division (SED) issued its motion to compel discovery on October 26th data request to SoCalGas asking for its communications with Boots & Coots. But the utility refused to answer the questions.
Notably the Cal Advocates Office issued a motion the next day on October 27th regarding documents requested in discovery regarding well kill issues and the contract for Halliburton Energy Services/Boots and Coots.
According to the motion, “…SoCalGas has brought all meaningful discovery in this proceeding to a halt.” It brought up that either Halliburton and/or Boots & Coots had performed other services at the site, including bacterial testing over a nine-year period which ended just prior to the onset of the blowout. As the Blade Report mentioned the corrosion problem caused by microbes in the groundwater, any bacterial testing should be considered relevant.
Another concern of Cal Advocates was the tendency of the gas company to place documents requested in the discovery phrase on time-limited databases. That office wanted to ensure that all documents would be available for downloading.
It also wanted to examine all contracts with Halliburton and its affiliates to determine if the well kill costs were being paid for with ratepayer funds, insurance proceeds, or shareholder money.
In a Joint Case Management Statement of SoCalGas, the SED, the Public Advocates Office, and other parties that was conducted on February 21, 2021, 89 violations noted by SED were discussed and witnesses determined for testimony at the upcoming evidentiary hearing for the CPUC investigation into whether the gas company should be sanctioned. Nine other previously noted violations of the original 330 violations listed in the SED’s opening testimony in 2019 were withdrawn.
During these evidentiary hearings in April 2021, testimony was taken of several involved in the well kill attempts, including the gas company’s Glenn Lafevers (Transcript) concerning the crude oil which was emitted during the first well kill on November 13, 2015.
SIX YEARS LATER
October 23, 2021 marked six years since the odor of mercaptans escaping well SS-25 overwhelmed residents living near the Aliso Canyon Gas Storage Facility. To address the anniversary, Save Porter Ranch and Food and Water Watch held a press conference to discuss current issues, including the proposed increase on gas storage. Also discussed was the announcement the day before by Governor Newsom of a proposed state regulation that would ban any new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of homes, schools, and health care facilities.
The speakers were State Senator Henry Stern; the California Director of Food & Water Watch, Alexandra Nagy; Tyson Siegele, energy analyst with The Protect Our Communities Foundation; co-founders of Save Porter Ranch, Kyoko Hibino and Matt Pakucko; and co-founder of Environmental Health Research Andrew Krowne.
On the day of the anniversary, Save Porter Ranch hosted a table at the Granada Hills Street Faire at which attendees can get handouts about the CPUC meeting, make a donation, and get questions answered. At noon, more than 35 residents and activists met at the booth to start a march that circled the perimeter of the event twice, while they held signs and chanted.
My article about the sixth anniversary of the blowout.
The next month, coalition partners, including Food & Water Watch, Save Porter Ranch, Aliso Moms Alliance, and the Sunrise Movement, as well as residents from the SFV and West LA, met in Sacramento to call on Governor Brown to close the Aliso Canyon and Playa Del Rey facilities, both operated by SoCalGas. In addition, they asked for an EIR (Environmental Impact Review) to be conducted for the SoCalGas Ventura Compressor Station, which is located across the street from an elementary school, and for the CPUC to be held accountable for its gross negligence in failing to properly oversee SoCalGas operations.
This event was held on the two-year anniversary of Governor Newsom’s directive to the CPUC to “expedite” the closure of Aliso.
The event began with a press conference at the Capitol, and then a march to the CPUC offices, with protestors holding mops and cleaning supplies to symbolically “clean” the agency’s building of “undue influence from SoCalGas,” according to Food & Water Watch. It was noted that the parent company of the gas company, Sempra, had spent $115,823 since the gubernatorial election to lobby the CPUC, as well as spending more than $1-million lobbying legislators and other agencies.
The last action was a sit in outside the governor’s office, calling on him to issue an executive order directing the CPUC to shut down Aliso.
Here’s the press release issued by Food and Water Watch about the day’s events.
WAITING ON THOSE MONITORS
In August 2018, the Aliso Consent Decree was announced, allotting money from the Gas Company for various projects, including an air monitoring system to be placed on the fenceline at the facility to measure BTEX chemicals as well as methane. But somehow despite the money being deposited by March 2019, the monitors have still not been installed by the end of 2021.
Much of the delay should fall on the Aliso Fund Committee (AFC), which consists of lawyers from the state Attorney General’s office, the County District Attorney’s office, and the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office. It wasn’t until 25 months after the decree was announced, that the AFC held a community town hall. At that meeting, many residents called the attorneys on the delay, and even called BS when one of them blamed COVID, as the lockdown didn’t start until one year after money exchanged hands between SoCalGas and the committee.
Here’s my article chronicling the issues and events surrounding the monitors through the second community meeting in October 2020.
On April 3, 2021, the AQMD, named by the AFC as the administrator for the system, held a community meeting, at which a timetable was revealed. The day before, the AQMD governing board had voted to transfer $1-million, which had been designated for an AQMD health assessment, to the AFC fund for the new monitoring system. This increased the amount available for monitoring in the Porter Ranch area to a total of $2.5 million and in an environmental justice community, to be named later, to $1.5 million. The board also approved issuing RFP 2021–12 to solicit vendors. This link contains the motion to transfer the money and the RFP.
As the data collected by this system may be used as a resource for the upcoming health study, the CAG took an interest in pushing for the this project to be expediated. To this end, the group held a meeting in March with Andrea Polidori, AQMD Advanced Monitoring Technologies Manager, and Jason Low, Assistant Deputy Executive Officer of the Monitoring and Analysis Division for Science & Technology Advancement for the AQMD, to discuss our concerns.
At the April 3rd meeting with the community, the AQMD team gave a presentation with more details regarding the timeline.
But as July was ending, and no announcement as to the selection had been announced, I sent an email on July 22nd to Polidori asking for an update, and two days later received a response which said that the agency had received six proposals, and had selected Argos/UCLA on June 8th. It further said that his staff was “working on finalizing the scope of work and contract with the vendors” and would like to hold a community meeting once that happens. It also said that the contract is expected to be executed in mid-August once the AQMD has received funds from the AFC.
After not hearing anything more from the AQMD for two months, I sent another request for an update on September 24th.
I received an almost immediate response which said that the AQMD received the funds in late August and the draft contract with the new vendor was currently undergoing internal review. Polidori added that once the contract has been finalized, Argos/UCLA and the AQMD will hold a community meeting.
At the end of November, I sent another email, but didn’t receive an email until Friday evening, December 10th, which was addressed only to myself (and not a “reply all” response which would include my fellow CAG members, the PRNC board, and some other community leaders) asking if he can discuss the matter over a phone call. That next Monday, I responded, “Thank you for your reply Friday night. As I have been inquiring about the status of the BTEX monitoring system on behalf of our community, I know that some of the community leaders would like to be involved in any discussion or announcement of what seems to be a delay in the implementation” and suggested a Zoom call.
After that, I have not heard back from him until January 7, 2022. This new email said the Aliso Canyon SEP contract has been approved by the AQMD Legal Division and sent to the Argos/UCLA for signatures. Once the contract has been fully executed, the vendor will organize and hold an initial community meeting to gather feedback on the draft air monitoring plan and the overall project.
The head of Argos is scheduled to appear at the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council meeting on January 12th.
Hopefully this next stage will be a quick one. It certainly would have been better if the monitoring system had been in placed before the current wave of methane withdrawals started.
A POTENTIAL ROADMAP TO CLOSURE
As a result of the CPUC’s recent action to increase capacity at Aliso, Senator Stern announced on December 10th that in early 2022, he intends to introduce a bill setting a “roadmap to close Aliso” by 2023. He created a website that discusses the details of his plan, which includes specific actions that can be taken by the state and agencies, as well to ways the community can help.
At his press conference, Stern said that he believes the CPUC will want to do the right thing, but added that the agency may need help in making a plan that may exceed its scope of authority. He called the vote by the CPUC commissioners the month before “a big disappointment and a big step backwards.”