Aliso Canyon: Five Years of Tumult
- Part one: The leak spurred quite literally dozens of suits involving thousands of plaintiffs.
- Part two: An infographic offers a glimpse of the leak, the effort to stop it and trends in energy consumption in California.
- Part three: Five years after Aliso Canyon gas leak, public health at the heart of the tug-of-war .
- Part four, today: In Porter Ranch, development returns, but angst endures for some residents.
- Part five, Tuesday, Oct. 27: The future of the facility is still up in the air.
It was in the air.
Ken Sampson could smell gas at his Porter Ranch home, but couldn’t quite identify the source.
He looked around his house, just to make sure no lines were leaking.
Check… negative. No visible signs of trouble.
Yet, that odor lingered.
It was late October 2015. Porter Ranch residents were also confronting currents of the invisible but distinct odor.
They all lived in the shadow of Aliso Canyon, the sprawling Southern California Gas Co. field of natural gas wells and reservoirs just blocks to the north.
By Oct. 23, the mystery was no more. It was announced that a SoCal Gas well, SS-25, had blown out. It was spewing metric tons of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas and a byproduct from the natural gas stored thousands of feet below the ground.
“My biggest concern … it wasn’t about business, it was about my family,” Sampson said, as he rattled off the questions that were racing through his mind as the news began flooding through the San Fernando Valley suburb. “Is it going to affect my kids? Is it going to affect my wife? That’s where my concern immediately went.”
What ensued was the worst methane leak in American history, lasting until the following February — spewing 109,000 metric tons of methane into the air. The leak spurred a massive evacuation out of the area, scores of lawsuits, a monthslong gut-punch to the real estate market and other, less chartable scourges: fear and mistrust among the residents.
Porter Ranch is now a study in contrasts. There’s little sign that just five years before, an environmental catastrophe and major public health challenge was evolving in the hills north of them as scores of residents were suffering from bloody noses, headaches and nausea.
Now, Amazon Fresh is readying to open — at the site of a former Whole Foods, which moved down the street to The Vineyards complex — a sprawling new shopping center. Toll Bros., the developer, is also building new homes.
SoCal Gas itself calls its facility safer than ever, and vital to the L.A basin’s power needs as it pipes in and out natural gas to the region’s power plants and ultimately to the electricity needs of millions of customers.
Each day, people walk in the park. Children play. Dogs get walked. Life goes on — even in the era of pandemic.
And yet, beneath the gloss of a trendy new shopping center and inviting new dwellings, there’s a core group of residents for whom pre-blowout “real life” has not returned. In the wake of a 2019 “root-cause” report that found SS-25’s well casing had corroded, and well casing leaks at the site dated back to the 1970s, tension endures for these folks, who fear a recurrence of the crisis of five years ago.
They are still fighting to shut down the natural gas site. Meanwhile, SoCal Gas has declared the facility vital to the region’s energy needs and says they’ve taken the necessary steps to prevent a repeat disaster.
So, amid the current surface calm of Porter Ranch, the battle endures via lawsuits and public meetings and government lobbying. It’s a fight that has gone from Sesnon Avenue all the way to the governor’s residence, with little sign of easing in the months, perhaps years, on the horizon.
Housing market ‘on fire’
If you need a measure of just how much Porter Ranch has recovered from the dark days of late 2015 and early 2016, consider housing prices.
In January 2016, a value index by Zillow for a single-family home in Porter Ranch stood at $730,000. In September of this year, the index is at $887,000 — a healthy 22% increase, and climbing.
Residents and Realtors point to the area as one of the last remaining bastions of potential growth in the largely built-out city of Los Angeles. At a time of low inventory and high demand, new homes are being built here.
Porter Ranch — even amid memories of the blowout — has emerged as a hot market, a place for buyers to lay down $1 million-plus on new digs.
Matt Horn, a Realtor and broker associate with Matt Horn Group at Keller Williams — put it more succinctly: “The market is on fire,” he said.
“For Porter Ranch, it’s always been highly desirable,” said Horn, who along with his wife, specializes in north San Fernando Valley residential real estate. “Most of it has superior schools. It’s a very nice community to be in, with lots of services.”
Things were much tougher five years ago.
During the six-month period after the gas leak, Toll Brothers’ net sales in Porter Ranch plummeted from 74 homes to negative 1, compared to the same period before the leak. That brought new sales to “a screeching halt,” according to allegations filed in a 2018 lawsuit against Southern California Gas Co. and its parent company Sempra Energy.
As the leak wafted through the Porter Ranch air, banks stopped lending on Porter Ranch homes, especially after Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency. Escrows halted. Buyers couldn’t close on pending deals.
Realtors found themselves getting really creative. Horn recalled scurrying from a bank to a credit union to fund a loan for a concerned buyer who was trying to buy a home close to Aliso Canyon.
“Our sales literally stopped in the first part of January,” said Sampson, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker Quality Properties, who remembered finding hotels for his clients who were caught in between having sold their old homes and not yet able to get into the new one.
“It was, all of a sudden the banks said, ‘no, we’re going to wait,’” he said.
By the end of October 2015, according to one tracker, the median home price in Porter Ranch was $707,500. Prices retreated into the high- to mid-$600,000 range through February — when the leak was capped.
But by September 2016, the median price in the 91326 ZIP code had rebounded to $824,500, 16.5% higher than when the leak began.
Horn — who’s weathered such disasters as the Northridge earthquake in 1994 and the Great Recession in 2008 — wasn’t surprised. His 31 years in the business taught him a few things.
“We’ve seen the repetition of disastrous events in the marketplace,” he said. “Usually, people have very short memories when it comes to something like that.”
Within a couple years, things start normalizing, he said.
Five years later, homebuyer disclosure and contingency forms explicitly cite the Aliso Canyon blowout and future production plans in the hills just to north. The language even includes the nosebleeds, headaches and nausea that people experienced during 2015 leak. Buyers are offered a chance during the inspection phase of the process to back out.
Not one has, Horn said. “Never,” he said. “Not yet.”
It’s clear that businesses and commercial developers are following the homebuyers here.
It was just a year after the well was capped, in February 2016, that ground was broken on a $150 million mixed-use development – The Vineyards. And now, anchored by a big, new Whole Foods store, it’s up and running.
During the groundbreaking, then-L.A City Councilman Mitch Englander, who represented Porter Ranch, said the Vineyards had been a long time coming, and the fruit of more than a decade of planning and negotiations.
“The Vineyards will not only include an elegant design and first-rate retail experience,” he said. “It also will offer communal space for engaging events and civic participation so that residents may fully express the identity of the Porter Ranch community.”
Angst beneath the sheen
Five years later, Paula Cracium — a past president of the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council — touts her area as a “great community,” that is “ready to move on” from the gas episode.
But beneath the sheen of the new development, angst endures.
Thousands have filed lawsuits over the blowout. Others say they are still suffering the health consequences from the blowout.
And there’s a unique dialogue that continues among highly engaged residents over the role that Aliso Canyon — and SoCal Gas — plays in the community.
Even as the health and economic challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic take center stage, they worry about the threat of another Aliso Canyon leak and the possibility of increasing gas capacity at the facility. Their desires to see the facility closed have not ebbed, even after five years.
Cracium remembers divisions forming from the very beginning. There they were, in then-Sen. Barbara Boxer’s office, discussing the well breach, when it was clear to Cracium there were some residents not affected at all by the leak and others who were deeply concerned.
It was “fragmented” and “very divided,” she said. “There were those with no effects at all and expressed frustration that their schools were closed. They didn’t see the need to shut down Aliso Canyon. And then there were those who felt everyone was going to die, that it has to shut down.”
For the latter group, full recovery from the blowout transcends new homes and shopping centers. For them, it’s about a fair, thorough study on the health effects of the breach — one that they hope contributes to the eventual closure of the facility.
For five years, that group’s concerns have played out in numerous townhalls, ongoing community meetings and myriad discussions with elected officials.
To this day, they lament a lack of trust in SoCal Gas, L.A. County Public Health officials and state regulators.
Last week, Matt Pakucko, a longtime critic of SoCal Gas, raised new concerns about the facility, which stands several hundred feet from his home. He cites the possible threats posed by recent fires in the area, the specter of a major earthquake and the questions left unanswered by the delayed start to the health study.
To him, they fuel his uncertainty about why the facility should even exist. “We’re still fighting,” he said.
In 2019, the Saddleridge fire started in Sylmar late on Oct. 10 and quickly raged toward Porter Ranch, eventually consuming more than 8,000 acres. A few days later, crews spotted flames at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field. A relatively small fire, it was extinguished on Oct. 15. But the news about the blaze sparked concern among residents.
After the fire, SoCal Gas said there were no indications of damage to the gas company’s infrastructure or leaks at the facility. Monitoring equipment showed no signs of methane or other constituents that would indicate a natural gas leak, or air quality concerns, the utility said.
At the time, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said that several state, county and city agencies would form a group that would “identify any risk mitigation process or requirements for the facility that may be required to reduce the risk for or to protect the surrounding community.”
After a year-long investigation, officials found the source of the spot fire to be “a natural sub-surface seep and not storage gas.” Such seeps are not uncommon in California near oil and gas reservoirs, officials said.
“One famous example is the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles,” according to SoCal Gas, which investigated the fire along with agencies including the California Public Utilities Commission, South Coast AQMD, Los Angeles County Fire Health Hazmat Department, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, and the California Air Resources Board.
SoCal Gas officials say they’re restoring the areas at the site, and backfilling open excavations while stabilizing the disturbed area.
As for the quake threat, a study commission by SoCal Gas, at the behest of state regulators, found that Aliso Canyon facility is in an area of moderate to high ground shaking hazard, which is comparable to other sites in Southern California near major active faults.
Larger earthquakes — the kind that might occur every 975 or 2,475 years — could damage some wells, and might allow gas to leak from the well system at depth, according to the report, which noted “limited threats” from strong ground shaking. Aliso Canyon, officials note, withstood the nearby 1994 Northridge earthquake, which shook the area with 6.7-magnitude intensity. No gas was released to the surface during this event, officials said.
“We have already taken several steps to address these remote risks, including operating the field at a reduced pressure, converting all active wells to tubing-only flow, and sealing with cement and abandoning more than 40 percent of the wells at the facility,” according to a statement by Neil Navin, SoCal Gas vice president for gas transmission and storage.
Changes and safeguards
Porter Ranch resident Issam Najm wasn’t always in the fight. The breach itself was a problem, he said, but as an environmental engineer himself he was mindful that accidents can happen.
“It was one delay after another,” he remembered of the efforts to cap the well. “It was a just a nightmare… In the meantime, I could see the community’s anger. But I said the company had an accident and the company is trying to fix it.”
Najm’s tolerance dwindled. He became the president of the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council, a position he only recently stepped down from. In 2018, he wrote a scathing official letter to the CPUC alleging that SoCal Gas knew of levels of crude oil amid the spewing methane but didn’t report it to the community.
SoCal Gas officials, pointing to decades of oil production in the hills, say the allegations are off the mark. No one should be surprised that there is oil beneath the surface of the area, they said. They point to December 2015, when after residents reported oil spots the company investigated to find that oil in the midst had been blown by the wind into the community.
Officials say the fact that oil existed in the fields was nothing new.
“… That oil is produced there is not a secret to anyone, including members of the PRNC,” read a statement in response to Najm, noting that after oil “spots” were found in Porter Ranch the residue did not pose a health risk.
Amid the give-and-take, Najm says he is no less critical of Porter Ranch’s giant neighbor.
“This company has lost the privilege of being a neighbor,” he said. “They betrayed the trust of the community.”
But the company maintains it has kept its word and taken appropriate steps to assure the community’s safety. The Aliso Canyon site is safer and more transparent to its Porter Ranch neighbors, SoCal Gas officials say.
“SoCal Gas has worked diligently to complete what experts have called ‘the most comprehensive safety review in the country,’ creating multiple layers of safety at Aliso Canyon,” said company spokesman Chris Gilbride.
Improvements include stronger physical safeguards inside and outside, increased inspection and monitoring, more testing of the on-site system and extensive sharing of monitoring information with the public via a website. They also cite more engagement with local residents, public officials and first responders.
“The other thing that has improved is our coordination with the stakeholders that have a vested interest — L.A. County, the fire department, public health,” Gilbride said. “There is top-notch coordination there on issues where we could have potential problems.”
SoCal Gas sees a vital future for the facility. Even as California works toward stringent clean power goals, the natural gas infrastructure will still be essential to store and move energy, company officials said.
“The backstop that allows us to keep adding renewables is the NG (natural gas) system,” Kilbride said.
Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, who lives in Porter Ranch, was skeptical of that description.
“You need a system that has some storage capacity,” he said. “But tell me why all that storage capacity should be in one place? I agree we’re going to be burning natural gas for a while. But do we need to store a two-month supply for the entire region in one place where we’ve already had the largest blowout in history? No.”
On the horizon
Residents, some uneasily, look to the future and the ongoing process that will determine the role of the Aliso Canyon facility.
They anxiously await the county’s long-delayed health survey, the groundwork for which is only now coming together.
As early as November, they anticipate a Public Utilities Commission decision on whether to increase storage capacity at Aliso.
Najm is wary that the public’s voice could lose out to a cost-benefit analysis.
But despite SoCal Gas arguments otherwise, a CPUC adminstrative law judge last week concluded capacity should remain at 34 billion cubic feet.
Meanwhile, activists used the five-year-anniversary as an opportunity to double down on Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Last November, Newsom sent a letter to the CPUC nudging the regulator to get moving “to expedite planning for the the permanent closure of the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein renewed her call for the facility’s closure on Friday. “I have repeatedly called for the Aliso Canyon facility to be shut down, and I do so again today,” she said in a statement. “This facility shouldn’t be allowed to continue to put Porter Ranch residents’ lives at risk.”
Yesterday, we joined activists & families sickened by the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas blowout – many of whom are still suffering the effects today.
We need @CAgovernor @GavinNewsom to #ShutAlisoDown now. His failure to do so is hurting people & families. https://t.co/kDscTcNZuw pic.twitter.com/oIcjFhv6ZD
— Food & Water Action (@fwaction) October 21, 2020
For some, even as property values solidify and development booms in the area, the angst won’t ease until that occurs.
“Porter Ranch will recover when this facility closes,” Najm said. “That’s when the anxiety will end.”
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Five years later, has Porter Ranch recovered from Aliso Canyon well blowout? - LA Daily News
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