Under a new proposal put forth by Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, the new chairman of the Committee on Utilities and Commerce, the CPUC — long under fire for alleged lapses and mismanagement — “would be broken apart with many of its duties distributed to other state agencies,” U-T San Diego reported. Gatto, the paper detailed, “would place an initiative before voters as soon as November that would remove the commission’s regulatory authority from the California Constitution, effective July 1, 2018.”

Joined in the initiative by Assemblymen Scott Will, R-Santa Clarita, and Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, Gatto lambasted the CPUC’s performance. “The people of California are deeply concerned by the CPUC’s failures in recent years,” he said, according to California Newswire. “You have folks in the Bay Area justifiably concerned after a pipeline explosion, Orange County worried about nuclear waste, Sacramento and the Central Valley on edge with oil trains, and of course, Angelenos deeply concerned after a gas leak.”

The L.A. neighborhood of Porter Ranch has been sent reeling by massive emissions from a recent pipe rupture. The ordeal has added to a full plate of woes for the commission; “response to the San Bruno pipeline explosion in 2010 and the 2012 closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station have become the subjects of criminal investigations by state and federal prosecutors,” the Los Angeles Times observed.

Solar squabbles

The CPUC also recently ruffled feathers with a hotly contested vote on the way solar power is metered relative to traditional power. The commission cast its lot with the solar industry in “a dramatic 3-2 vote that saw two commissioners change their minds after a last-minute development favorable to the rooftop solar industry,” as the Desert Sun reported.

“The decision will require Southern California Edison and other utilities to keep paying solar-powered homes and businesses full retail rates for the electricity they generate. In an 11th-hour revision announced by Commission President Michael Picker on Wednesday, it will also ensure that solar customers don’t have to pay for the upkeep of transmission lines. The solar industry cheered that change, even as it prompted two commissioners to vote against a decision they said they otherwise would have supported.”

The move left some aggrieved. State “ratepayer advocates and the utilities, which lose out on electricity sales and some of the infrastructure costs that are bundled into retail rates, say that solar customers put an undue burden on nonsolar customers, who must make up that shortfall,” the New York Times noted.

Mustering support

Faced with news of Gatto’s plan, the commission signaled its hopes to forge ahead on the basis of support from other lawmakers. CPUC spokeswoman Terrie Prosper acknowledged “there is still much to do,” but added, “we look forward to working with the Legislature on any constructive and helpful reform initiative that is put forward,” as the Times reported. “Only by working together on real changes that have the ability to succeed can we make the CPUC stronger and more efficient, and our relationship with the Legislature more productive,” she said in a statement.

One bulwark for the commission has been the governor’s office. “Last year, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed six bills that would have changed how the commission conducts business,” KQED recalled. “Three bills by now-Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon would have established new oversight measures on the commission.

“Another of the vetoed bills, by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would have tightened rules on private communications between utility executives and state regulators. It also would have tightened conflict-of-interest rules and limited the CPUC president’s powers. And two bills from state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, would have set performance criteria for the agency and included commission meetings in transparency laws.”

As yet, the station noted, Gov. Brown’s office has not offered comment on the Gatto scheme.

“Federal agencies will have to complete the review by the end of May and determine if a more in-depth analysis is necessary,” the paper added. “They will also have to make future permit applications publicly accessible.” If the practice clears federal scrutiny and is deemed adequately safe to the environment, fracking operations could continue. If not, they could be postponed or forestalled indefinitely.

Notching a victory

The result marked a significant win for the Center for Biological Diversity and the Environmental Defense Center, two organizations that alleged frackers had imperiled aquatic life with “over 9 billion gallons of wastewater” each year, according to Grist. Accusing the U.S. Department of the Interior of “rubber-stamping fracking off California’s coast without engaging the public or analyzing fracking’s threats to ocean ecosystems, coastal communities and marine life,” as the Christian Science Monitor observed, the groups filed suit against the federal government.

In a report on the deal, the left-leaning think tank Think Progress noted that fracking had quietly been conducted off the California coast for years. “The initial revelation of ongoing offshore fracking came as a result of Freedom of Information Act requests filed with the Department of the Interior by the Associated Press and Santa Barbara-based community organization the Environmental Defense Center, which just released a new report on the issue,” the organization recalled. “The investigations have found over 200 instances of fracking operations in state and federal waters off California, all unbeknownst to a state agency with jurisdiction over the offshore oil and gas industry.”

Industry pushback

For their part, defendants insisted the case was without merit. “Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association, said that the petroleum industry has operated safely in California for decades, working closely with regulators and other officials,” Natural Gas Intelligence reported. Industry defenders have argued that offshore fracking levels in the Pacific haven’t been that high. While the moratorium “will not likely affect production at large because California has not been producing much offshore oil lately,” Reuters noted, “companies have fracked at least 200 wells in Long Beach, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach and in the wildlife-rich Santa Barbara Channel,” according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

The American Petroleum Institute, which joined the suit as a defendant, has refused to agree to the settlement package. Other hurdles to its implementation have arisen. The two separate settlements must still be approved by a federal judge, according to NGI.

Porter Ranch debate

Although the EPA largely exonerated fracking of the dire accusations leveled against it by some environmental activists, the practice has re-entered the public debate in California due to the massive gas leak in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of greater Los Angeles. Maya Golden-Krasner, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, recently linked the disaster to fracking in an editorial at the Sacramento Bee; “newly uncovered documents show that hydraulic fracturing was commonly used in the Aliso Canyon gas storage wells,” she wrote, “including a well less than a half-mile from the leak.” Perhaps predictably, Golden-Krasner called for Gov. Jerry Brown to ban the practice of fracking across the state of California.

Regulators have been investigating a possible connection. “More than two months after Southern California Gas Co. detected a leak at its Aliso Canyon field, observers are searching for reasons the well may have failed. Some environmentalists are drawing attention to fracking, while experts caution that such a rupture is unlikely,” the Los Angeles Daily News observed. “The leaking well’s maintenance records don’t indicate that it was fracked, according to a review of the file released by the state Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources.”

Given that 11 million residents rely on these power supplies, that shows the gravity of the problem.

Now the Environmental Defense Funds and other green groups are using the disaster to make the case against fracking in California, arguing that the inability to stem the Porter Ranch leak shows that energy exploration companies and regulators alike are overconfident in their ability to keep energy production safe.

The DeSmogBlog, which is heavily visited by greens around the world and has been quoted and generated stories in many leading world publications, made the case in a recent post:

The SS-25 well itself was not fracked, state records show, but it is not uncommon for companies to frack gas storage sites to help compensate for damage to underground caverns from injecting gas underground. Another well near SS-25, SS-40, was in fact fracked, but that fracking took place at depths of over 9,000 feet, while the SS-25 leak is believed to be far closer to the surface.

 

“About two times a year on average, operators of gas storage facilities use hydraulic fracturing to enhance storage, mostly in one facility serving southern California (Aliso Canyon),” The California Council on Science and Technology noted in a January 2015 report.

Methane leaks depicted as natural result of fracking

Contrary to the many claims that natural gas is the clean form of fossil fuel, environmentalists cited by DeSmogBlog say the picture is much more complex:

The development roughly 15 years ago of high-volume hydraulic fracturing, combined with horizontal drilling, also spurred a shale gas rush nationwide — and researchers say that overall, the shale gas rush has leaked methane at unusually high rates.

 

Prof. Robert Howarth has been researching methane leaks from the shale gas rush for years, after co-authoring a landmark paper in 2011 that showed that natural gas production could be even worse for the climate than burning coal if enough methane leaked out.

 

Howarth now estimates that the shale gas rush has been remarkably leaky.

 

On Saturday, Jan. 23, the South Coast Air Quality Management District approved an order drafted by SoCal Gas that contains language promoting secrecy in the cleanup efforts while limiting the levels of liability in what is certain to be multi-million dollar damages.

“This order is an attempt to limit the damages from the date that they ‘follow the rules’ – which is when this was signed, Jan. 23,” said attorney Patricia Oliver, who has filed a class action lawsuit. “It’s very bizarre, almost a finding of innocence. If they are in compliance with the law.”

The ruling came down one day after a town hall meeting attended by two members of Congress and environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is also an attorney on the case. More than 1,000 residents packed into a local church to get medical and legal advice on how to deal with the disaster.

The offending site is in Northridge, where 115 natural gas wells are located 8,500 feet underground. Beginning Oct. 23, area residents began getting sick and experiencing bloody noses while reporting noxious fumes permeating the area. The catastrophe continued unmitigated and caused residents to move from their homes as Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency on Jan. 6.

SoCal Gas has been unable to plug the leak and predicts that it will need another month for full compliance. Los Angeles County Health Dept. says no long-term risks exist.

Resident Christine Katz doesn’t buy it.

“My daughter was hospitalized for three days in the ICU for upper respiratory problems,” she said. “My 2-1/2-year old was having trouble breathing and needed an inhaler. We were fine, living a normal happy family life until all of this happened and now we are living in a rental house with our three dogs far from home.”

Burrowed into the AQMD order is language that SoCal Gas can use as a defense in against the residents in a lawsuit, Oliver said.

Legal Cover

“Specifically, the order says it is being adopted to ‘further compliance with AQMD rules and regulations’ and that AQMD ‘believes that such conditions will mitigate the conditions contributing to the alleged nuisance and further compliance with AQMD rules and regulations,’” she said.

In other words, all SoCal Gas has to say in court is that they were following the order and the leaks were under legal levels, Oliver added.

SoCal Gas claimed that while inspecting the 115 wells it found numerous “minor leaks … below levels that would constitute a violation of current district rules” and that “all the minor well leaks … have been repaired.”

Yet the utility stopped short of including any language that would require proof of repair. Oliver has asked for such documentation and received none.

“There is no factual basis to support these statements,” she said. “All of their results have been secretive.”

While no facts have been forthcoming, SoCal Gas initially sought to specifically prevent its disclosure in the order by claiming that any data submitted regarding its progress be withheld from the public because it is a “trade secret.” This language was stricken by the AQMD.

An AQMD spokesman refused to comment.

In front a background of a steady stream of work vehicles ascending the Santa Susana Mountains to the Porter Ranch Aliso Canyon methane gas storage facility, several state senators laid out plans for dealing with the leak’s aftermath once the leak is stopped. The trick is to make sure residents are safe while assuring that energy is available for millions of California’s businesses and residents.

“In declaring the state of emergency, Mr. Brown — who has been criticized by many residents for his slow reaction to the problem — reiterated all the state has been doing to help plug the leak and monitor air quality, as well as the state’s efforts to make sure the gas company paid for disruptions and damage caused by the leak,” the Times added.

An environmental mess

The disaster afflicting Porter Ranch, one of Los Angeles’s newest communities, has broken unflattering environmental records. Already “the largest recorded natural gas leak in California’s history,” according to the Independent, the leak has been “expelling an estimated 110,000 lbs of methane into the atmosphere every hour: about a quarter of the state’s daily methane gas emissions.” Tim O’Connor, California director for the Environmental Defense Fund’s oil and gas program, told the Independent that the leak was “far greater than the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster” in its aggregate impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

Southern California Gas has conceded that its own judgment may well have been to blame for the breach. In a statement, the company revealed “it decided nearly 40 years ago against replacing an underground safety valve that could have cut off the gas leak when the storage tank first erupted in late October,” as the Fiscal Times observed. “Executives of Southern California Gas apparently concluded it was too hard to find replacement parts for the valve and that the underground storage tank wasn’t close enough to homes to warrant the time and expense. Instead, they gambled that the cutoff valve would never be needed. Now they are struggling to contain runaway greenhouse gas emissions that could cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and greatly contribute to climate change.”

Fumes and fury

The news has compounded outrage and frustration in Porter Ranch, where Southern California Gas has moved to help residents cope with — or flee — the fumes. “This is the biggest community and environmental disaster I’ve ever seen, bar none,” Mitchell Englander, the neighborhood’s representative on the Los Angeles City Council, told Bloomberg. “Life there is not on hold — it’s on the edge and it’s on the brink of pandemonium. People are living with fear, uncertainty and doubt.” What residents remain have been plagued by discomfort and illness.

“A shopping center by the freeway still bustles, but the longest lines are at a storefront that Southern California Gas established to assist residents with relocation, health problems, air-filtration systems and claims. The smell of chemicals added to natural gas — which itself is colorless and odorless — pervades the air. Homes of residents who’ve already received relocation assistance sit vacant, while signs warn of increased police patrols to ward off looters. Some residents and visitors wear gas masks.”

Health officials have issued reassurances that residents’ symptoms, including dizziness and vomiting, were only temporary.

Gov. Brown himself arranged to meet neighborhood representatives. Paula Cracium, president of the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council, told the Los Angeles Times “she and others at the meeting urged Brown to be more visible on the issue and to help with a major concern that will last long after the leak is plugged — declining property values.”