The California gas company responsible for the storage site where methane has been leaking from a damaged well for over two months has promised action to stop the breach, while a Los Angeles County supervisor has branded the situation a “mini-Chernobyl.”
SoCal Gas said it was working on a plan to siphon off and safely burn some of the leaking methane, a crisis which has led to months of protests and the displacement of thousands of families in the Los Angeles County community of Porter Ranch. The gas has also leaked into homes and schools.
The breach has steadily sent 62 million cubic feet of methane gas into the air every day since October 23, according to an estimate from the Environmental Defense Fund. Methane is 80 times more potent as a warming agent than carbon dioxide.
Since first being noticed by workers at Aliso Canyon, the location of the storage site, repeated attempts to stop the leakage have proved unsuccessful, leaving gas billowing downhill into Porter Ranch, where some 30,000 people live.
At a public hearing over the weekend, scientists, campaign groups, and residents of Porter Ranch said the gas company and California authorities had been slow to recognize the magnitude of the problem, or warn the public of potential dangers.
“This is a mini-Chernobyl,” Mike Antonovich, the LA county supervisor, told the assembly, according to The Guardian.
Public health officials are concerned about the potential health effects of benzene, a known carcinogen that is added to gas in order to help detect leaks when they occur.
“For about the first three weeks of November, there were levels of benzene being sampled in the community that were considerably higher than expected in the LA basin, and were likely to be higher than the government exposure level for eight-hour exposure,” Michael Jerrett, the chair of UCLA’s environmental health sciences department, told The Guardian.
On November 10, the company recorded benzene levels nearly six times higher than the safe limits for an exposure period over eight hours, the scientist said.