The Brief

Ten years ago today, what became the largest known gas leak in U.S. history was discovered in the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains above the San Fernando Valley.

The source — one of the 114 underground wells at Southern California Gas Co.’s Aliso Canyon storage facility, the largest in the state. The leak lasted nearly four months.

Natural gas is primarily composed of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that heats up the planet far more quickly than carbon dioxide. The leak released a quarter of the entire state’s methane emissions in 2015, equivalent to a year of pollution from half a million cars.

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LAist's Erin Stone discusses the 10-year anniversary of the Aliso Canyon gas leak, what's changed since 2015, and residents' concerns over the potential long-term effects, and what’s standing in the way of the facility being closed

Why the site of the largest methane leak in US history still hasn’t been shut down

LAist's Erin Stone discusses the 10-year anniversary of the Aliso Canyon gas leak, what's changed since 2015, and residents' concerns over the potential long-term effects, and what’s standing in the way of the facility being closed

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Outdoor air monitoring and sampling inside nearby homes during and after the leak also found elevated levels of carcinogens such as benzene, as well as toxic heavy metals.

As the smell of rotten eggs blanketed parts of the Valley for weeks, thousands of residents in Porter Ranch, Chatsworth and Granada Hills were forced to evacuate. Many reported rashes, nosebleeds, headaches and other strange sicknesses. There were reports of pets unexpectedly dying. Later on, some residents were diagnosed with cancer. Some died. Many think the leak caused it.

Community members organized to push for the facility to be shut down. Former Gov. Jerry Brown (and later, Gov. Gavin Newsom) promised to close it by 2027. SoCal Gas paid out more than $1 billion in settlements and penalties.

Ten years on, a vast quantity of methane continues to be stored at high pressure underground near homes, supplying industry and residences across the region. Lawmakers have passed policies to tighten oversight. Some of the most comprehensive studies on the health effects of natural gas remain underway. Concerns about the facility’s earthquake risk remain.

And for many residents in the nearby neighborhoods, uncertainty and fear remain, too.

They worry about the long-term health effects from the blowout and ongoing pollution. Many maintain a deep mistrust of SoCal Gas and the agencies meant to regulate them.

The blowout continues to force a reckoning over the state’s reliance on natural gas, its energy needs clashing with affordability, as well as the growing understanding of how fossil fuels harm public health and heat up the planet.

An air monitoring station sits near the entrance to the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility in the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains.

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Uncertainty about health effects 

Kyoko Hibino said she never had serious health issues until she moved to Porter Ranch, a few blocks from the Aliso Canyon storage facility, in 2007.

A few years later, she started coughing and getting nosebleeds. After the 2015 blowout, two of her cats died of cancer. Then, in 2020, Hibino was diagnosed with breast cancer. She’s in remission, but with no family history of cancer, she believes her illness is a result of the blowout and regular exposure to low-level leaks.

Hibino can walk to the facility's gates from her home. Standing there on a recent afternoon took her back to a traumatic time.

Kyoko Hibino stands near the entrance of the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility in Porter Ranch.

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“We fight like crazy, and then we got ignored completely. All the memories come when I see this,” she said.

The whole experience led her to co-found the grassroots group Save Porter Ranch. She, alongside neighbors, staged dozens of protests and lobbied lawmakers to shut Aliso down. But she’s mostly lost faith in the system she thought was meant to protect her.

“We go to every single public hearing and [the politicians] say pretty good things, and now it's 10 years later. Nothing changed,” Hibino said.

“I don’t want to be a victim anymore,” she added. “I don’t want to live in fear.”

Outside of the Southern California Gas Company facility in Porter Ranch.

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During and after the 2015 leak, multiple government agencies determined that the chemicals released from the well didn’t exceed standards dangerous to human health over long periods of time.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District, for example, monitored toxins, including benzene, a carcinogen, and hydrogen sulfide. The agency ultimately determined that the elevated levels of these toxins during the leak “are not expected to cause a significant increase in overall risk of health effects from either short-term or long-term exposure.” The levels were similar, AQMD said, to background levels of pollution we all breathe outdoors in Southern California.

“The reality is that natural gas storage at Aliso Canyon is safe and, at current inventory levels, protects California families from utility bill price spikes and provides the electric grid with reliable energy,” a SoCal Gas spokesperson told LAist in a statement.

But residents dispute that the facility is safe. And ongoing research is showing significant potential health effects.

During and after the leak, the L.A. County Department of Public Health logged thousands of complaints of rashes, headaches, dizziness, nosebleeds, body pain, fatigue and nausea.

Dr. Jeffrey Nordella treated many patients in Porter Ranch.

“People were sick, very sick with different symptoms that did not follow the particular patterns, let's say, of a sinus infection or a gastroenteritis or something along those lines,” Nordella told LAist.

He decided to dig into the reasons himself, obtaining blood sample data from residents across the region and comparing them to those of residents near the leak. He found statistically significant evidence of chronic benzene exposure in Porter Ranch residents. Benzene, a carcinogen, is found in crude oil and may have come from droplets that blew out of the well and landed on homes, cars and playgrounds during the leak.

UCLA researcher Michael Jerrett, who is leading ongoing health studies as part of a settlement agreement, said some of the early analyses by government agencies were limited because they analyzed levels of toxics individually.

Video from the early days of the blowout at the Aliso Canyon natural gas well near Porter Ranch. This video, from late November 2015, shows what became the nation's largest-ever natural gas leak.

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“We don't really have a good scientific understanding about what these mixtures do to someone's health,” Jerrett said. “You could have slightly elevated levels of benzene and heavy metals on an ongoing basis, and you'd say, well, if I look at each one of those individually, I don't think there'd be a long-term health threat. But if they have synergisms, they could escalate the potential impact of one contaminant.”

His team's research found benzene and heavy metals inside of homes even after the leak was plugged.

He said it was likely due to the “kill fluids,” or “drilling mud,” used to plug the leak. Several attempts were made, sending plumes of aerosols into the surrounding community.

“When we looked at the contents of what was being used in the mud, many of those metals that we saw elevated in the homes were also in the mud,” Jerrett said.

That prompted a broader study of indoor contaminants by the L.A. County Department of Public Health, which conducted its research several months after the leak was plugged.

The Aliso Canyon Gas & Oil Field.

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Roy Randall

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That study and subsequent research by Jerrett’s team also found elevated levels of benzene and heavy metals in the air long after the leak was plugged.

“There's some suggestion there that there could be ongoing emissions coming from that facility that are potentially affecting the local community,” Jerrett said.

Research has found that gas storage facilities — and there are hundreds across the nation — are prone to leaking methane, and with methane often comes benzene and other chemicals that are harmful to human health, including potentially for generations to come.

The latest study by Jerrett’s team found that women who were pregnant at the time of the leak had babies with low birth weights at rates almost 50% higher than normal.

Jamie DeRosa of Chatsworth was in the late stages of her pregnancy when the leak started. She had a C-section two weeks before her due date. Her child was born at just 5 pounds, 6 ounces. She feels that she’ll never know if the blowout — the sickening smell that lasted weeks, the oily substance that coated her car, her painful sore throat — contributed to that experience.

Her daughter, now 10, has developed healthily, but DeRosa still worries.

 ”I try not to think about it because it's something I want to put behind me, and I also definitely don't want to manifest something that's not there yet,” DeRosa said. “But at the same time, it's always in the back of your head.”

What’s changed since the leak?

SoCal Gas said it now conducts regular testing on its wells, has replaced inner steel tubing of every operating well to protect against leaks, and operates the gas storage reservoir at a reduced pressure, as directed by the California Public Utilities Commission and California Geologic Energy Management Division, or CalGEM.

The company also said it now monitors well pressure in real time, conducts visual inspections four times a day, and has installed a fenceline air toxic monitoring system along with methane monitors.

There are also newly installed community air monitors, overseen by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, or AQMD, in nearby parks and neighborhoods that provide near real-time data.

Those changes are largely a result of a slew of policies passed in California since the leak to tighten monitoring of pollution and regulations on such gas storage facilities, which previously had little oversight, said Adam Peltz with the Environmental Defense Fund. The group took the first aerial imagery of the methane plume during the leak that played on TV stations across the nation.

He said the policy changes since 2015 are a step in the right direction.

“Historically, there's been a natural gas storage leak somewhere in the United States around every five years, but there's reason to think that that will get less frequent because, in addition to California adopting good gas storage rules, the federal government adopted its first natural gas storage rules ever in 2017,” Peltz said.

The costs to retrofit and maintain these aging gas storage facilities, and the system as whole, is paid for by ratepayers, Peltz noted.

"How much do we want to spend on these facilities, as opposed to weaning ourselves off fossil fuels “so that we don't need to have these big facilities sitting right next to neighborhoods that, even with risk controls, are still worrisome?” Peltz said.

Another issue is the “alphabet soup” of agencies in charge of oversight of such facilities, said Mike Gatto, a former state assemblyman who chaired the Assembly’s Utilities and Energy Committee during the Aliso Canyon leak.

“Both the public and regulators themselves benefit from clarity. They benefit from having one clear responsibility, one clear duty, and I'm not sure that the changes post Aliso accomplish that,” Gatto said. “You still have a variety of different agencies that have some share in monitoring the wells and some share in performing the oversight functions that are so critical. That lack of clear authority, I don't think benefits anybody.”

The San Fernando Valley has a wide array of polluting industries — including Aliso Canyon, two big landfills, several recycling centers and more — with a hodgepodge of oversight. Rep. George Whitesides, the Democratic member of Congress who represents much of northern part of the Valley, said he’s pushing for more transparency from and monitoring of such sites at a federal level.

“What we see now is a moment when the administration is trying to decimate EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] funding and other scientific institutions of the federal government,” Whitesides said, “which is going to really harm our ability to both responsibly deal with Aliso, but also the hundreds of other sites across the country that are hurting our citizens today.”

Ongoing pollution

At a park just a few blocks from the entrance to the Aliso Canyon storage facility, a newly installed air monitor sits in the parking lot. Porter Ranch resident Issam Najm gestures toward it.

“ I don't need the monitor to tell me that there are toxic chemicals produced by this facility,” Najm said.

Issam Najm lives in Porter Ranch and says the only thing to do with the Aliso Canyon facility is to shut it down.

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As he sat at a picnic table, he pulled up the numbers on the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s website and listed the emissions that SoCal Gas has reported to the agency since 2017:

• About 2,000 pounds of benzene. 
• 29,000 pounds of formaldehyde. 
• 1,600 pounds of methanol. 
• 1,300 pounds of trichloroethylene. 
• 237 tons of volatile organic chemicals, which are major contributors to L.A.’s smog. 

“That is SoCal Gas’s own data,” said Najm, an engineering professor who served on the community advisory committee during the leak and as president of the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council from 2016 to 2020. “There's no need for any additional evidence. There's no change that would make it OK. The only change is that this facility cannot exist in an urban environment.”

Since the 2015 leak, the AQMD has issued 22 violations to SoCal Gas's Aliso facility, mostly involving fugitive methane leaks.

"Aliso Canyon is a large natural gas storage facility, and fugitive emission leaks — though far smaller than what occurred in 2015 — are not unusual," a spokesperson for the agency told LAist.

Najm said the peak of the community’s hope that Aliso would be shut down came in 2019, when Newsom sent a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission urging them to move more quickly to close Aliso’s gates by 2027 or sooner.

In 2022, CPUC officials released a report illustrating pathways to successfully do that. But in 2024, the commission voted to keep the facility open, with analyses on the necessary capacity to be released every two years. The first assessment, released Oct. 1, did find that capacity could be reduced.

“If our representatives really wanted to move on from this facility and remove it from this urban environment, they absolutely had the means and the capabilities to do that,” Najm said. “But it needed courage, and all I can say is that courage was lacking.”

A spokesperson for Newsom told LAist “the governor’s position on Aliso Canyon has not changed — he remains committed to its closure in a way that maintains safe, affordable and reliable energy and protects public health and safety.”

Aliso Canyon provides gas via pipeline to homes, as well as to power plants for generating electricity. Peak use has historically been during winter months, when gas use for heating homes rises.

“The governor wants to see Aliso Canyon phased out, but not at the cost of enormous price spikes for working families and our ability to keep the lights on,” the spokesperson wrote.

Looking to the future

For Najm, his efforts are now focused on making sure the state remembers Aliso as it works on the long-term energy transition. He’s been involved in the latest state-level proceeding on expanding renewable energy sources.

“This is not about we should never use gas,” Najm said. “This is only about the storage volume needed."

Reducing it would mean swapping out gas stoves for induction, gas water heaters and furnaces for heat pumps, and expanding cleaner sources of electricity generation and storage, such as solar, wind and batteries.

Porter Ranch residents will soon be able to purchase heat pumps through a state program. Fines paid by SoCal Gas for the blowout will go towards neighborhood sustainability projects, such as increasing shade at schools in the Valley and upgrading air conditioning systems at community centers.

Outside of the Southern California Gas Company facility in Porter Ranch.

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But for Najm and many survivors, this all feels too incremental. The trauma, and a lack of faith in the system, remains.

“I am far more cynical than I was 10 years ago,” Najm said.

What keeps him going?

“ To be blunt, anger,” Najm said. “I may not be able to do anything at the end of the day, but I'll be damned if I don't try.”

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”