Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said Tuesday that Southern California Gas Co. needs to be held accountable for the leak that has been out of control almost 15 weeks at its Aliso Canyon storage facility in Los Angeles County.
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Yesterday the state’s Attorney General, Kamala Harris, joined a civil suit already filed against the company that charges that it broke “health and safety codes, public nuisance laws and hazardous materials reporting requirements, as well as engaging in unfair business practices”.
The leak has created a public health and statewide environmental emergency, Harris said.
California’s attorney general sued Southern California Gas Co. The company will respond to the lawsuit through the judicial process.
SoCal Gas has set up a community resource center on Tampa Avenue near the entrance to their Aliso Canyon Storage Facility near Porter Ranch.
On Monday, SoCal Gas released an “incident update”, citing its own success in drilling past 200 feet of caprock above the storage zone.
The company could be fined up to $25,000 for each day it didn’t alert authorities, and $1,000 for each day the leak continued, the LA District Attorney’s Office says in a statement. Along with massive amounts of methane, the leak is releasing trace amounts of chemicals like the carcinogen benzene, as well as odorants that cause nausea, headaches and nosebleeds, reports Camila Domonoske for NPR.
In the United States, natural gas leaks from thousands of locations, daily.
SoCal Gas spokesman Mike Mizrahi has repeatedly insisted that his company complied with all relevant state and federal regulations in the run-up to the leak.
There has been efforts to stop the leak, as the Southern California Gas Co. initially planned to light the leak and burn off the methane, according to the Los Angeles Times.
California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in January and the state Senate is moving forward with a bill calling for an immediate moratorium on any new injections of natural gas and use of aging wells at the facility.
“This is a coup of government agencies working in secrecy, to figure out how they don’t step on each others’ toes”, said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a California nonprofit organization frequently involved in insurance and utility regulation.
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“SoCalGas, a regulated subsidiary of Sempra Energy, is “the nation’s largest natural gas distribution utility”, providing service to 21.4 million consumers in more than 500 communities”, its website says. The agency said the SoCalGas gas leak probably came from a well casing. Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.) that would direct Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to lead a federal review of the Aliso Canyon disaster and the response to the leak.
