Porter Ranch

By Dano T Bob - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, January 7, 2016

So, if you’ve been in a cave the last week, or on holidays time, or only follow corporate media (Washington Post did cover this), there is a massive gas leak going on in southern California right now that no one seems to know how to stop, especially the company responsible. Pretty bad, right? Yeah, really bad. Here’s the basic details:

Methane gas, a HUGE contributor to climate change as a Greenhouse Gas, is currently leaking from from a facility at Aliso Canyon(Orange County, below Los Angeles) at rate of 110,000 pounds per hour, all day everyday. Somewhere around 2,000 some odd homes have been evacuated thus far, and building moratorium has been proposed for the area near the leak. Residents are also gearing up to sue the hell out of the owners of the facility, the Southern California Gas Company(feel free to contact them).

I first learned of this leak (and I currently live in California!) on the day after Christmas via this super informative article from VICE, “Why Engineers Can’t Stop Los Angeles’ Enormous Methane Leak.” Cheery title and timing, eh?

This article does on to discuss how the EDF, Environmental Defense Fund, found out about the leak a week or so earlier via an infrared heat camera, calling it “one of the biggest leaks we’ve ever seen reported” and “absolutely uncontained.”

The leak originally sprung in mid-October (!) and currently “accounts for a quarter of the state’s entire methane emissions.” Another juicy tid bit from this read:

“Methane, the main component of natural gas, is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to climate change impact. About one-fourth of the anthropogenic global warming we’re experiencing today is due to methane emissions, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. Leaks like the current one in California, it turns out, are a major contributor. In Pasadena, for instance, just 35 miles from the leak in Aliso, investigators found one leak for every four miles.”

It goes on to say,”So far, over 150 million pounds of methane have been released by the leak, which connects to an enormous underground containment system. Silva says that the cause of the leak is still unknown, but research by EDF has also revealed that more than 38 percent of the pipes in Southern California Gas Company’s territory are more than 50 years old, and 16 percent are made from corrosion- and leak-prone materials.”