This Compressor Station Leaks Methane Gas Next To An Elementary School.
Will the Newsom Administration Block SoCalGas’s Plans To Expand It?
Earlier this month, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a “setback” law that bars oil companies from drilling new wells near schools, hospitals, or residential neighborhoods. This is a victory for Newsom and for environmentalists who have been pushing this policy for years. But while the Governor takes his victory lap, some in the Latinx community are feeling left out among all the gladhanding and high-fiving.
That’s because while the setback legislation bans new drilling, it does nothing to stop the construction or expansion of other gas company-owned facilities with similar risk profiles such as natural gas compressor stations—giant industrial facilities that keep gas flowing through hundreds of miles of pipelines. Experts warn that gas compressor stations pose similar health and safety threats, including fires and explosions.
And, in Ventura, Southern California Gas Company plans to expand one particular station that has suffered at least a dozen unplanned methane leaks that sits directly next to a heavily-Latinx elementary school.
The Newsom Administration has the power to block SoCalGas, which is why parents and teachers—not to mention the city council, county commission, and school board—are all pushing the Governor to act. Here’s what you need to know:
What’s undisputed:
The Ventura Compressor Station is a critical piece of infrastructure for delivering natural gas to SoCalGas customers. It’s important because it regulates the pressure and flow of gas as it travels through a vast pipeline and ultimately into homes and businesses.
The compressors themselves are aging, and something needs to happen in the near future. That something is either to modernize and expand the station to keep up with current capacity requirements—or to retire and relocate it.
Most compressor stations—in California and across the country—operate in low population areas. The Ventura Station came online in the early 1920s when fewer than 5,000 people lived in the city (and under 15,000 in the whole county). Today, Ventura County has a population of 900,000 and about 110,000 people call the City of Ventura home.
In 2017, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory identified the Ventura Compressor Station as one of California’s “super-emitters” of methane gas, which is 80x more pernicious for planet warming than even carbon dioxide.
SoCalGas’s view:
The gas company says that the Ventura Station has been “operating safely and reliably for decades,” and its effort to “replace and modernize” the existing compressors is part of SoCalGas’s ongoing effort “to be a good neighbor” and “take pride [in] being part of the Ventura community.” SoCalGas acknowledges NASA’s findings, but disputes the knowability of how much methane the station released, and says, in any event, the company made repairs to mitigate unplanned emissions.
SoCalGas conducted a feasibility study that included the possibility of relocating the compressor station. Here’s a slide deck that the company presented to the Ventura community explaining their process and internal results:
The company’s analysis of the best alternative to keeping the station in Ventura was to relocate it to Devil’s Canyon Road, which SoCalGas acknowledged “scored slightly higher in environmental considerations”. However, the company rejected the Devil’s Canyon Road option because “it did not achieve the greatest overall benefit …” What exactly does that mean? According to SoCalGas, keeping the compressor station in Ventura provides “greater reliability … in consideration of project timeline” and “reduces the project cost burden to our customers”.
Ventura’s view:
Ventura Mayor Sofía Rubalcava penned a letter to Governor Newson urging him “to take immediate steps to stop the modernization and expansion of Southern California Gas Company’s natural gas compressor site located within one of our sensitive residential neighborhoods.” Here are key excerpts from the letter:
“There are 442 residential units with approximately 1,105 residents within a quarter mile of the facility … Further, over 384 children (90% of whom identify as Latinx) are enrolled in the school across the street from the facility who have concerns about the health effects of such a facility … The City Council learned that [SoCalGas] occasionally has planned and unplanned releases of gas into the atmosphere. As explained by the [SoCalGas] representatives, since March 1, 2017, the facility has experienced an ‘unplanned gas release’ on ten different occasions which resulted in the discharge of nearly 500K cubic feet of gas into the neighborhood. We believe that this cannot possibly be good for the neighbors. We understand the need to modernize outdated facilities and believe this is an opportune time to relocate the facility away from neighborhoods and schools."
The Ventura City Council, Ventura County Board of Supervisors and The Ventura Board of Education each passed resolutions raising red flags, urging deeper scrutiny from the Newsom Administration, and urging relocation of the compressor station.
Writing separately, Matt LaVere, one of the county supervisors, explained that the supervisors “understand the need to modernize outdated facilities, [but] there must be alternative locations which allow for required modernization without the direct impacts to the Westside community, most particularly, its children. Now is the opportune time to identify such a location and relocate the facility away from the numerous sensitive populations directly adjacent to the current location.”
Parents, teachers, business leaders, and neighborhood residents also weighed in to express concern over the expansion proposal—including multiple protests and over 150 comments and letters directed to the city council alone.
In a recent opinion piece in the Ventura County Star, Ryan Gellert, the CEO of Patagonia—whose company has an office near the compressor station—called for the closure of the station after touring the facility:
“As we walked up, we were overwhelmed by the smell of gas—a jarring experience when I saw the E.P. Foster Elementary School and Boys & Girls Club across the street, as well as the homes surrounding the area … The smell of fumes is a regular occurrence in this neighborhood. In the midst of Fourth of July weekend, alarmed residents called 911 because they smelled gas and rightfully feared for their safety, something SoCalGas attributed to an ‘unplanned venting’ of natural gas.”
A former teacher at E.P. Foster Elementary School, Laura Gulovsen, told the Ventura County Star that she recalled “breathing this sickening gas and chemical stuff” while playing with children in the school yard.
Isba Silva, a mother of two children and neighborhood resident, was one of nearly 50 residents who spoke out during a recent Public Utilities Commission hearing over the compressor station: “How many of you would send your kids to E.P. Foster knowing this? I don’t have the means to move my kids to another school at this time . . . Our kids deserve to go to school with clean air.”
Whether a new generation of Latinx children go to elementary school next to a leaky gas compressor station rests formally with the California Public Utility Commission. But Gavin Newsom’s intervention—or continued silence–matters a lot.
A CPUC decision is expected in 2023. Here is the status of the CPUC proceedings:
It initially appeared as though SoCalGas’s expansion project would sail through, as CPUC initially permitted the project. But, following the public outcry in Ventura, CPUC’s Executive Director, Rachel Peterson, wrote a public letter to SoCalGas requesting that the company “halt further planning and procurement for the Ventura Compressor Station modernization project” until SoCalGas holds public forums in Ventura and engages in a more detailed feasibility study. In what reads as a hedge on the agency’s original permitting decision, Peterson noted that it would be “premature to commit to costly purchases” before those additional steps are taken.
SoCalGas’s “general rate application” is pending before the CPUC. That proceeding establishes the maximum billing rate that the gas company can charge to customers. These proceedings involve little scrutiny of things like the environmental impact of specific gas company projects and expenses.
Normally, this is not the type of proceeding used to address the environmental and health impacts of expanding a gas compressor station. For that type of infrastructure creation, a gas company usually needs to apply for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, a much more intensive and rigorous review process.
How did SoCalGas avoid that more rigorous scrutiny? Back in 2014, the gas company requested—and received approval for—a comparatively minor modification of the facility with the understanding that at some point, once the project started, the customers would need to bear the cost through traditional rate paying. SoCalGas is treating this much more major expansion of the compressor station as if it were the same project that it received approval for in the past.
The question is whether CPUC will allow the company to do so. There are three options: 1) keep the rate application proceeding on a fast-track and leave the question of the compressor station expansion embedded within it; 2) keep the compressor station expansion question part of the rate application, but pull that question out and put it on a separate track of consideration; or 3) require that SoCalGas apply for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity. The gas company wants to keep things on the fast track. The city and its supporters want SoCalGas to apply for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity; but, if that doesn’t happen, they want at least a separate track for consideration of the compressor station expansion.
Governor Newsom’s Role:
Newsom’s silence on the Ventura Compressor Station is an aberration from his notoriously hands-on approach to politically sensitive CPUC decisions. CPUC is an independent agency, but Newsom appointed four out of its five commissioners. And the president of the commission, Alice Busching Reynolds, worked inside the governor’s mansion as Newsom’s senior advisor on energy policy until December of last year. The bottom line is that his voice matters, and that’s precisely why Ventura’s mayor directed her letter opposing the compressor station expansion to him.
One former CPUC executive director summed it up this way: “We do whatever the governor tells us to do, period. You don't do anything without [his] staff reviewing it or talking to you or approving it.”
Earlier this year, when CPUC released a draft plan involving net metering of solar power, Newsom immediately expressed his discontent —“That draft plan that was recently released, I just had a chance to review, and I’ll say this about the plan: We still have some work to do.” A reporter asked him specifically whether he thinks changes need to be made, and he responded: “Yes, I do.”
Most directly relevant: After the explosion of SoCalGas’s facility at Aliso Canyon, Governor Newsom wrote a letter to CPUC’s President requesting “additional action by the California Public Utilities Commission to expedite planning for the permanent closure of the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility.”
Right now, Governor Newsom is running expensive campaign-style television ads attacking Florida’s governor for actions he’s taking in Florida. So, there isn’t a newfound modesty preventing the Governor’s intervention here—if he feels comfortable weighing in on how Ron DeSantis treats migrants in Florida than surely he would be comfortable weighing in on a gas company’s plan to undertake a construction project to expand a compressor station with a history of methane leaks—doubling its current level of emissions—directly across the street from an elementary school in California with a student population that’s 90% Latinx.