Los Angeles hid power plant methane leak for a year

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-09-23/los-angeles-hid-a-methane-leak-for-a-year-activists-want-the-power-plant-shut-down

by AndrewBissell • 6 years ago

247 129 6 years ago

latimes.com

omginternets• 6 years ago

Paywall. Anyone have a link?

neonate2• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/ClKWd

mc323• 6 years ago

I don’t know the particulars of this location; however, often times it’s not dirty industry invading and settling in poor neighborhoods but rather poor neighborhoods sprouting up next to these industries because land is cheaper.

For example the Sriracha company settled in the middle of nowhere, the north San Jose water treatment facility was in the middle of nowhere but now you have housing next to them and people complaining about smells or pollution.

To avoid this you’ll need better more stringent zoning laws with bigger buffer zones.

MattGaiser• 6 years ago

Then you will have people complaining about restrictive zoning laws.

You can’t win.

Chardok• 6 years ago

The issue isn't just isolated to those living around it. Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-gree...), letting it leak out like that for a year has likely caused significant environmental harm.

floren• 6 years ago

Methane is removed from the atmosphere due to chemical reaction within about 12 years, so good news: with the leak stopped, the effects of the leak will taper off relatively quickly.

pedrocr2• 6 years ago

Just because you built something in the "middle of nowhere" doesn't necessarily mean you should get to impose externalities that devalue the properties around you. It depends on what the externality is but zoning may not be enough, you may need to actually own the land you're creating restrictions over for it to be fair. Otherwise there's a first mover advantage in starting a negative spiral. If you don't do it on your land before your neighbor you get all the disadvantages without making money from the use.

_jal• 6 years ago

The argument operates on a spectrum of specifics, and line drawing is always going to look absurd to someone.

A similar things happens when small communities are encroached by commuters - newcomers get upset about things the locals have "always done", and it almost invariably ends up becoming a class thing.

I have a relative who has lived in the same home for almost 50 years. She basically owns a hill with her house on top - it is about 2 acres. Until a few years ago, she'd been routinely burning leaves and lawn debris (or, later had the kid who did her lawn work do it).

It didn't matter until some neighbors sold to a developer who put up commuter-McMansions across from her. It threatened to become a huge issue with the new people making bullshit claims about fire risk and whatnot. She stopped, I helped put up a tall privacy fence at a strategic point (that they also hate, but can't do anything about) and she'll be fine.

Who was right? Well... I don't think there is a right answer, only a negotiated one.

foota• 6 years ago

Feels like the ideal solution would be coupled with lowering prices in other areas through upzoning or decreased regulatory costs in order to not negatively impact those currently making use of the sub-standard housing available.

ksdale2• 6 years ago

My wife grew up near a naval base and I always thought it was funny how regularly you’d hear stories about people buying houses under the flight path and then complaining to the base.

It seems useful to me to allow people to build houses in less desirable locations, and it also seems... not wrong(?) to expect people to deal with a “nuisance” that they knew existed when they purchased their house (especially if they got their house for way cheaper than they would have otherwise!)

I understand the impulse of people wanting to make their nuisances disappear, but I’m not sure this particular problem (zoning where people choose to build near industry) is one that needs solving.

acoard• 6 years ago

It's also worth mentioning that this can be a financially motivated move if the "nuisance" has an impact on the property's value.

cjrp2• 6 years ago

In the UK there is a case[1] (based around cricket, of course) which set the precedent that even if you "come to the nuisance", you can still force people to stop.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_v_Jackson

btilly5• 6 years ago

How do you know that the people knew that the nuisance existed?

"Sometimes really loud jets take off really early" is not something that you would want to put into a realty listing, and is not necessarily something that would happen when you see the house. It might have been disclosed somewhere, but do you know how much paperwork there is with buying a house?

I can easily see someone not realizing that they would have this issue until after they move in. As much as they "should have known", they truly may not have.

Likewise with power plants, "You'll get a stench when the wind blows the wrong way" is again not something you advertise and not necessarily something you'd notice when you see the house.

(Of course, "You have to disclose all this crap" is part of why there is so much paperwork, which might or might not include some of it now...)

dv_dt5• 6 years ago

I agree with some of the broad ideas here, but I also understand that doing this systematically pushes lower income people into higher "nusiance" areas which often end up being higher disease and lower lifespan areas from environmental pollution - which is inherently unfair as well as increasing the costs borne by lower income classes.

So we end up with a pretty ugly societal tradeoff if we only look at this as some sort of voluntary choice, when it is not really so.

pstrateman• 6 years ago

I think the issue is that people who move to these places are largely unaware of the specific issues when they make the decision to move.

I know it sounds ridiculous that someone wouldn't understand that moving next to a naval base would put you under a flight path, but I'm sure it happens.

(It would be kind of embarrassing to admit to that as well).

mc323• 6 years ago

Right, the first things I’d do would be look at google traffic historic patterns (morning, night), look at any big facilities around (large campuses, depots, stations, etc.) what do they produce?, superfund sites, topography (low lying, historical flood maps, etc) and drive around the neighborhood, check it out. What’s the vibe?

You don’t usually buy sight unseen.

tw04• 6 years ago

I would expect a mandatory one-page waiver, literally printed on paper of a unique color (not white), that people are forced to sign before buying the house.

Too often things like this get buried in a mountain of paperwork, and while they SHOULD read through it all, the average buyer won't take the time. Americans (maybe people in general) are lazy.

BurningFrog4• 6 years ago

Housing under a noisy flight path is an interesting example.

In an ideal world, I think that would be an excellent place for deaf people to live. They're not disturbed by the noise, it would be cheaper than other areas, and living in a community of other deaf people seems like something many would really enjoy.

The typical regulation approach has no room for adjustments like these, and I think it's bad for everyone.

threatofrain• 6 years ago

If you allow people to build on a floodplain they will. Now they are a humanitarian risk.

rapind• 6 years ago

There’s housing developments built on Rainier’s mudslide...

DoctorOetker3• 6 years ago

why isn't there more research into active noise canceling (where the source noise can be known micro or milliseconds in advance) so airplanes can lift off more silently and similar inside the cabin?

alternatively use WHISPER technology helicopters to transport passengers to and from the plane at height

skocznymroczny• 6 years ago

In Poland it's common for people to build their houses near rivers in areas that are in a risk of flooding. When buying the land, they are warned of the consequences and advised to insure the house against flood. Of course, no one does it, because "what are the odds", and then they are the first ones to seek government aid because their livelihoods got destroyed.

Schiendelman• 6 years ago

The best way to avoid this is no zoning at all, and restrictions on what you can emit.

hinkley• 6 years ago

Some American industries have the foresight to gobble up all the land around them and become landlords. Every few years they get the option to decline renewing a lease and expanding their facilities.

But since they control the construction around them, they can do their own zoning after a fashion to avoid worst case scenarios like condo balconies downwind from their exhaust.

I’m gonna fault Sriracha here a bit for cheaping out not preventing a problem. Land speculators can’t buy land that isn’t for sale. And they can’t use dirty tricks against another corporation to force a sale, like they might against private land owners.

DoctorOetker3• 6 years ago

And they can’t use dirty tricks against another corporation to force a sale, like they might against private land owners.

so in theory the airports could modify their schedules and air paths so as to game the private housing market? buy affected houses while under your paths, then sell after changing your paths, repeat?

tobltobs• 6 years ago

To avoid this you’ll need better more stringent zoning laws with bigger buffer zones.

Zone the whole world as industrial zone, climate crisis solved.

ajsnigrutin• 6 years ago

Same problem everywhere...

Not just huge industries.... literally people buying land next to a farm (which has been there for 100+ years), then compain due to animal noises and smell.

doggydogs94• 6 years ago

25 years ago, Denver opened a new airport; way outside the city. Guess where the first houses sprung up? You guessed it, right under the takeoff and landing flight paths.

cm21872• 6 years ago

Activists trying to shut down power plants in the middle of a series of blackouts as a result of the lack of capacity kind of summarises California to me.

ceejayoz• 6 years ago

There are many important long-term things that involve short-term negative impacts.

Trying to sweep the problem under the rug instead of fixing the leak isn't a great call, either.

cm21872• 6 years ago

Enjoy your blackouts then!

jlmorton3• 6 years ago

It seems like the implication is that this is toxic pollution, but methane is safe to breathe even in large quantities. It's biologically inert, and not thought to be a carcinogen.

I'm not sure I understand the outrage. Methane is a very strong greenhouse gas, but it's not dangerous to residents in the area, unless the leak was so extremely large as to pose a fire hazard, or displace oxygen.

notRobot• 6 years ago

There was a massive gas leak, of something that's very, very bad for the environment, and the government hid it from the people. Why shouldn't we be outraged?

jlmorton3• 6 years ago

The entire article is about residents in the area breathing in the methane. There is no danger to them breathing in the methane, even in very large amounts. It does nothing to you.

It's a potent greenhouse gas, and of course we should try to eliminate leaks. But that is a global effect, and on a global scale, this was not a massive leak at all, it was infinitesimal.

MichaelApproved• 6 years ago

I'm not sure I understand the outrage. Methane is a very strong greenhouse gas

You answered your own question.

liability• 6 years ago

If they covered up this, what else would they cover up? The coverup itself is cause for concern because it proves they're dishonest.

JanisL• 6 years ago

Honestly I'd be worried if a power plant was leaking gas and they didn't talk about it. Having good maintenance is a good thing, if you don't do this maintenance and cover up problems instead of fixing them you end more likely to get situations like the Longford Gas Explosion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esso_Longford_gas_explosion. The other thing is that continuity of energy supplies are important, I remember clearly the 3 weeks where there was no hot water or heating after that explosion due to the interruptions to supply.

Cactus2018• 6 years ago

NASA post about CA Methane:

A Third of California Methane Traced to a Few Super-Emitters

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7535

dv_dt5• 6 years ago

It's interesting that there is capability to locate methane leaks that doesn't seem to be directly tied to regulatory monitoring?

Between remote sensing and more localized lower cost handheld and IOT sensors, this seems like an area which could be strongly improved for fighting climate change.

https://hackaday.io/project/12568-portable-ecological-labora...

ip26• 6 years ago

The capability is still developing. Europe has satellites capable of detecting methane sending back new data every day now. Processing that data to identify leaks is still a challenge, not something we have been able to batch in a nightly computer job. We can get there, but the very first satellite methane dataset is still only a few years old.

mturmon5• 6 years ago

It is tied to regulatory monitoring, in CA:

https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/greenhouse-gas-inve...

The ability to check the self-reported emissions with remote sensing is new, and has led to a recalibration (ahem) of self-reported emissions.

The technology for remote sensing of CH4 is very exciting and it's being pushed forward in a lot of different ways. As you pointed out, you need sensors at various scales (in situ, airborne, space), calibration of retrieved concentrations (it's not a direct measurement), and inversions to find out what the sources are, given that you observe a certain set of concentrations. It's a complex problem!

clairity4• 6 years ago

we've come to expect so little from media outlets like the latimes, but it's frustrating that even an article from jpl would not provide basic order of magnitude to ground the risks, not just an attention grabbing headline.

methane is estimated to cause about 25% of pollution effects, so 1/3 of that is on the order of 8% of california's pollution effects, which means addressing these super-emitters could be impactful, though not game changing.

mturmon5• 6 years ago

The headline was not intended to be merely attention-grabbing.

It was trying to illustrate that although leaks are a fractal phenomenon, you can make significant progress by starting at the top few. For more on this, see the abstract of the Nature paper at:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1720-3

You'll notice the abstract focuses on what we'd call the "80/20" nature of the problem.

Going all the way to risk (of warming?) would enlarge the scope of the investigation a lot. I think I've seen talks by Riley Duren, the PI, where he gives some percentage breakdowns of the form: "CH4 is x% of GHG potential over the next Y years and in our study region, z% of CH4 came from these sources."

WillPostForFood• 6 years ago

DWP staff say the methane plume didn’t leave the power plant site.

Seems unlikely...

neonate2• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/ClKWd

yboris• 6 years ago

Why can't we have a government-funded system that pays out to any whistle-blower some proportional amount of money (proportional to the damages they prevent)?

This would align the incentive system very quickly!

zzapplezz• 6 years ago

For good actors. Brings to mind the Cobra Effect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

DoctorOetker3• 6 years ago

How could the cobra effect get into play though?

some CEO arranges for some extremely damaging behavior, then tells on himself?

darth_avocado2• 6 years ago

Wait the headline says they hid it for a year, but readin it it says > couple of years <? What kind of journalism is it?

capableweb• 6 years ago

I think you're mixing up stuff. Here is what what said:

- Headline: "Los Angeles hid a methane leak for a year"

- "Power revealed last month that its power plant had been leaking methane gas for at least three years"

- "The plant’s compressor units had been leaking gas “for the last couple years,” one staffer said. The utility had a plan in place to fix the compressors later in the year but"

- "especially because utility staff said they discovered the leak in August 2019, a full year earlier. Staffers said they didn’t notify the public because they didn’t believe anyone was at risk"

So, it has been leaking for years. But they only discovered it a year ago. They cannot hide what they do not know, hence the headline.

Although if I was the editor, I'd have chosen "Power plant leaked methane for years" rather than "Someone hid it for a year", but I guess that's the angle they've chosen (or the former was already known, so not "news").

darth_avocado2• 6 years ago

Ohh yeah, you're right, I mixed up things. Thanks.

chabes• 6 years ago

“Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers first detected a methane plume at the power plant in 2017 but didn’t alert DWP until more recent drone surveys showed the leak had worsened.”

RandallBrown• 6 years ago

I think headlines and articles are often written by different people.

kaikai• 6 years ago

It's true, editors generally write headlines, often without the input or approval of whomever writes the article.

smoyer• 6 years ago

In an area producing oil, if you don't use the methane for something like this power plant, then it will be burned off as waste at the well. I'm not advocating for the power plant but rather pointing out that methane itself is a byproduct you've got to deal with. And clearly the plant should be burning the methane instead of leaking it. As green energy becomes more and more feasible, I think the answer to a problem like this will be to lower the quantity of oil being produced so there's less waste methane to deal with.

osamagirl69• 6 years ago

I have seen it happen several times where it was considered illegal to use waste methane (for example, to run a generator) because the operator was unable to get a permit to do so.

The reasoning is that small scale power generation produces other pollutants (NOx, etc) that are even more tightly regulated than the methane.

This plant still should have been able to secure a permit to flare the methane (thus converting it to CO2 + soot) which would at least be better for global warming than releasing the methane directly

vondur• 6 years ago

The DWP is a very corrupt agency, I believe mostly due to it's union. They are currently under investigation by the FBI for corruption. I remember reading that there is some sort of large fund paid from the budget that goes to the union without any sort of oversight on how it's spent.

wow_yes• 6 years ago

Going to need a source - most corruption is corporate, unions represent Labor and thus don't have a corruption incentive (only Capital does)

tesmar2• 6 years ago

unions don’t have a corruption incentive

Going to need a source.

athms• 6 years ago

The DWP is a very corrupt agency, I believe mostly due to it's union.

You are partially correct. It is corrupt at all levels, union and management. Laziness and incompetence all around.

thewebcount2• 6 years ago

DWP is awful. They only send you a bill every 2 months. So by the time you get the bill and see that it's high, it's almost too late to do anything about it before the season is over and the weather has changed. They also combine water, electric, solid waste removal, and sewer onto one bill. So the first time you get a bill from them after having come from somewhere else, you're like, "Why is my electric bill for my 800 square foot house with no air conditioning $800???" Oh, it's 2 months, and for 4 different things. Quite irritating all around. There was a ballot initiative to get them to send a monthly bill, but of course it had a bunch of other stuff that made no sense in it so it got shot down.

stucomp• 6 years ago

I have friends who live in a complex that was built for athlete housing during the 2010 Winter Olympics. The sewage treatment plant is 1 away on one side and an asphalt plant is 1km away on the other side and have been there before anybody ever considered building anything else near there.

There are never ending complaints from the residents about the asphalt plant.

The town council soliciting bids to have paving done got only one quote - from the company that operate the asphalt plant. They offered to truck the asphalt in from their other plant in the next town 45 minutes away, with all the trucking costs at the town’s expense.

Nimbyism is out of control.

Los Angeles hid power plant methane leak for a year

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