Flint Michigan,EPA:Donald Trump Says Let Them Drink Lead,Then They Won't Need Education;To L.A.:Breathing Methane Is Good For You -That's Why It's Called 'NATURAL GAS'
Flint Michigan,EPA:Donald Trump Says Let Them Drink Lead,Then They Won't Need Education;To L.A.:Breathing Methane Is Good For You -That's Why It's Called 'NATURAL GAS'
The same BP and Halliburton that caused the ongoing Gulf Of Mexico oil spill crisis and distaster is ALSO equally or more responsible than SoCal FOR THE PORTER RANCH - L.A.- Porter - Ranch Aliso DISASTER.Donald suggests we drink more lead filled water .
Paradoxically Halliburton's Boots And Coots is trying unsucessfully so far to put out the very 'methane volcanoe' that is a result of their environmentally disastrous and toxic natural gas fracking technology.
It is this very glut of natural gas that has led electricity generation to convert from coal to natural gas,creating a new unpredictable gas storage crisis to fill the new extreme demand for natural gas and natural gas storage that this toxic water poisoning earthquake causing technology has caused in replacing coal fired electricity in the first place.Had California not switched on a massive scale from coal generated electricity to methane generated electricity the Aliso srorage disaster would not have occured in the first place nor would people around the U.S.and worlds be facing a toxic water crisis.The same BP and Halliburton that caused the ongoing Gulf Of Mexico oil spill crisis and distaster is ALSO equally or more responsible than SoCal FOR THE PORTER RANCH - ALISO DISASTER.Donald suggests we drink more lead filled water .
METHANE GAS CRISIS: HOW CALIFORNIA'S PORTER RANCH BECAME A GHOST TOWN
Signage directs prospective buyers to new housing developments under construction in the Porter Ranch neighborhood, January 3. Methane gas leaks from the SoCalGas Aliso Canyon Storage Facility well SS-25 in Porter Ranch have forced many residents to abandon their homes. SoCalGas is currently drilling a relief well that is expected to take months to complete and plug the leak.
In the winter of 2008, a real estate column in the Los AngelesTimes profiled Porter Ranch, a collection of subdivisions in the San Fernando Valley that feels utterly removed from the huge city on whose northern edge it lies. The neighborhood is “graced with lush parks,” the Neighborly Advice column gushed, and “attracts residents seeking sanctuary from the urban hubbub.” Toll Brothers, the upscale builder that has developed much of the land here, promises potential residents they will “relax in open, natural spaces and live within a true community.”
Until very recently, you would have had to do a considerable amount of Internet sleuthing to discover that Porter Ranch, home to 30,000 people, is not exactly the pristine, quasi-rural paradise promised by its developers and boosters. The hills that frame its Instagram-ready backdrop also cradle the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility, a parcel of 3,600 acres in which the Southern California Gas Company has turned 115 defunct oil wells into an underground warehouse that can hold 80 billion cubic feet of natural gas. On October 23, workers discovered that a 7-inch casing in one of those wells had ruptured, and that well has been continuously pouring methane into the atmosphere, at a peak rate of 60,000 kilograms per hour (the rate of loss has been reduced since then). A counter on the website of the Environmental Defense Fund estimates that, as of Thursday morning, the total loss has been more than 79,000 metric tons of methane sent into the air above Los Angeles.
A "No Trespassing" sign and fence mark the boundary of the SoCalGas Aliso Canyon Storage Facility, looking toward where a leaking gas well and a relief well are being drilled. Public trails crisscross the hills near the well where the smell of gas was strong on December 30, 2015.
PATRICK T. FALLON FOR NEWSWEEK
Methane, or CH4, traps about 85 times more heat radiation than carbon dioxide, when effects of the two are compared over a 20-year span, making it a much more potent contributor to climate change; according to the Environmental Defense Fund, the Porter Ranch methane leak was equal in mid-December to emissions of six coal-burning plants or 7 million new cars on the road. Despite its green image, California is second only to Texas in its contribution to the United States’ carbon footprint, and the Porter Ranch leak is believed to be adding 25 percent to the state’s daily methane output.
As for the much-touted serenity of Porter Ranch, that’s also gone. Methane is not a killer on the order of carbon monoxide, but medical research suggests it can cause a variety of chronic ailments, including bloody noses, headaches, vomiting and rashes. A compound called mercaptan is routinely added to methane in order to alert a household of a potential leak, since methane is colorless and odorless—sulfurous mercaptan is so noxious, you have no choice but to pay attention. To live in a methane effluvium has been, for many in Porter Ranch, an experience ranging from unpleasant to excruciating. Thousands of families have left, spending their winter holidays in hotel rooms or rentals (SoCalGas is paying). They do not know when they will come back, since SoCalGas does not know when the leak will be plugged. It might be late February, but it could be late March.
Heavy machinery and equipment sits along the hillside of the SoCalGas Aliso Canyon Storage Facility behind a Porter Ranch Housing development on Sesnon Boulevard on December 30, 2015. A week later, on January 6, California declared a state of emergency of the environmental disaster.PATRICK T. FALLON FOR NEWSWEEK
“We are not refugees living in tents,” says Porter Ranch resident Matt Pakucko, acknowledging the community’s relative affluence. “But this shouldn’t happen.” He says SoCalGas and public officials have turned him and his fellow residents into “guinea pigs.” He does not believe the company’s assurances that long-term methane exposure poses no known health risks. Nor is he convinced that SoCalGas can stop the leak by next month. And he is troubled by his proximity to Aliso Canyon, the source of all the troubles that have befallen Porter Ranch, posing a question that must haunt many others here: What else is going on in that hill?
Boots and Coots
Porter Ranch started appearing with some frequency in the headlines just as world leaders convened in Paris for a landmark climate change conference in late November. Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, visited Porter Ranch on his way to Paris. He toured a school and pronounced the methane leak a “natural disaster,” though the cause was almost certainly human error, or at least human hubris.
Co-founders of Save Porter Ranch Kyoko Hibino, left, and Matt Pakucko sit on their couch with their cats. The pair are trying to raise awareness of the nearly three-month-old gas leak and urge lawmakers to act.PATRICK T. FALLON FOR NEWSWEEK
Since then, the sense of crisis has only deepened, moving slowly but surely over Porter Ranch. Two schools are closed, their students relocated. Businesses are suffering because residents are leaving: About 2,500 families have relocated and another 1,800 are on their way out. On Tuesday, California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency, outlining the work seven state agencies are doing in response to the leak and mandating that SoCalGas “cover costs related to the natural gas leak and its response.” The latter move should appease those who’ve criticized Brown as slow to respond, perhaps, they’ve suggested, because his sister, Kathleen Brown, sits on the board of Sempra Energy, the parent company of SoCalGas (that charge is “scurrilous and irresponsible,” says a spokesman for the governor).
Gas, though, is impervious to politics—and the gas in the well known as SS-25 seems to be especially intractable. Unable to stop the flow with an injection of liquid into the well, SoCalGas called in experts at Boots & Coots Services, the Halliburton subsidiary considered the best in the world at killing wells. But they couldn’t kill this one, with six additional liquid injections proving ineffectual. So, for now, the best solution is to drill a relief well into the 8,700-foot-deep sandstone cavern that holds the gas and, ultimately, plug SS-25 with cement. That will take at least another two months.
A flyer for "Smell Something? Say Something" warns Porter Ranch residents of the leak. Natural gas has been spewing out at a rate of up to 100,000 pounds since October, according to state officials.PATRICK T. FALLON FOR NEWSWEEK
“Our community is starting to look like a ghost town,” says David Balen, a local businessman on the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council. He pulled his 8-year-old daughter out of school at Thanksgiving, his worries for her health trumping SoCalGas’s claims that there was no risk. “Nothing is normal anymore,” he laments. His little white dog looks even more beleaguered than he does.
Last month, the Paris talks concluded with an accord that would compel—though not force—major polluters like the United States and China to radically curb their greenhouse emissions. “Whatever they agree to in Paris, it's not enough,” Brown said before heading to the summit. He has ambitiously pledged to decrease his state’s greenhouse emissions by 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2030, which he can do only by weaning the state off carbon.
The methane leak in Porter Ranch, though, is an apt demonstration of our complex affair with carbon fuels. The natural gas stored in Aliso Canyon flows to the homes of about 20 million customers in the greater Los Angeles area. So while we contemplate wind farms and solar arrays, we remain married to an antiquated infrastructure that lets us do what we have done for centuries: extracting energy by burning carbon.
Paris, with all its promises, has come and gone. Porter Ranch is still enshrouded in noxious gases.
Alexandra Nagy, an organizer with Food & Water Watch, speaks about a plan to "Shut It All Down" as residents including Matt Pakucko, president and co-founder of Save Porter Ranch, center right, and Kyoko Hibino, rear right, look on, during a board meeting for the group on January 3.PATRICK T. FALLON FOR NEWSWEEK
A Fire That Lasted Six Days
Despite its artful hyperbole and stylized violence, the Paul Thomas Anderson film There Will Be Blood got one thing right: Los Angeles is an oil town built by oil men. Today’s oil men don’t look like Daniel Day-Lewis’s rough-hewn Daniel Plainview, but there are still some 3,000 active oil wells in Los Angeles County, none more famous than the one called the Tower of Hope , a rig on the Beverly Hills High School campus cleverly concealed with floral decorations.
Oil was first pumped from Tapo Canyon in 1910, in what is today the community of Simi Valley; Aliso Canyon, directly to the east, yielded its reserve of hydrocarbons in 1938, with SS-25 opening on February 25, 1954. It operated as an oil well for less than two decades; in 1973, SoCalGas converted the Aliso Canyon oil wells to gas storage caverns.......................
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