Is It Time To Shut Down The Playa Del Rey Oil Storage Facility?

PLAYA DEL REY, CA — Residents are demanding that Los Angeles leaders shut down the Playa del Rey oil storage facility located at the Ballona Wetlands before a blowout happens — and before it's too late.

RELATED: Brush Fire Burns 5 Acres At Wetlands, Oil Field In Playa Del Rey

The Culver City Council and Los Angeles City Councilmembers Mike Bonin and Paul Koretz this month are pressuring Southern California Gas Company to close its facility, saying that the area is heavily populated and the site could present danger for residents. It's been compared to Aliso Canyon, also known as Porter Ranch, where one of the largest gas blowouts in the history of the U.S. happened.

The PDR oil storage facility is run by SoCalGas, just like the Aliso Canyon site, and sits at the Ballona Wetlands, interconnected to the proposed project to restore the area, which some disagree could actually cause more environmental disruptions than good. Six ongoing lawsuits are now tied to the project.

The Santa Monica Environmental Task Force met last week to discuss the PDR oil storage facility, which is now about 81 years old, and hear from people who want it shut down. The meeting was chaired by Erik Neandross, an environmental consultant with Gladstein, Neandross & Associates, whose clients include SoCalGas and Southern California Edison. Patch reached out to Neandross to confirm if there is a conflict of interest and what decisions could come next from Santa Monica leaders. Neandross told Patch he has no connection to the SoCalGas Playa del Rey site and does not work on any projects connected to SoCalGas.

"This item will be added as an agenda item for a future meeting," Neandross told Patch.

Ethan Senser from Food & Water Watch, a grassroots group pushing for clean energy policies and aiming to end oil drilling in residential neighborhoods, shared why the call to close this site is growing.

"The site is dangerous for a whole host of reasons," Senser said. "It's not necessary as we move toward a clean energy economy and real solutions are ready to go."

Senser described how more local municipalities now support closing the facility and want to change the way the state treats oil drilling.

The Playa del Rey oil storage facility used to be an active oil field with 29 active gas wells, including eight that were originally drilled in the 1930s. The field extends far beyond the borders of SoCalGas' property, beneath the wetlands, and all the way to the marina.

"So the danger of gas migrating and causing a blowout or seeping up to the surface isn't just located or limited to SoCalGas' facility," Senser said. "It extends much further."

Most of the gas people use in Southern California isn't produced locally.

"Ninety-nine percent of the gas we consume in California is imported, coming over the pipelines through Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Canada," Senser said.

Only 10% comes from California's Central Valley. Much of that gas comes from fracking, which also includes contaminated water, aquifers, pollution and other environmental hazards.

"This also primarily falls on Black and Brown communities and some of the poorest regions of the country," Senser said. "The facility is connected to a much larger system and helping to perpetuate the harms caused by that system."

The site is near Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles International Airport, Silicon Beach tech companies, including Facebook's office in Playa Vista, and a number of high-end homes and condos.

The area is also at high risk for a tsunami and wildfires. In a map released Monday from the California Geological Survey, the site could have serious flooding problems if a tsunami strikes — and the agency asked local leaders to consider what the evacuation routes could be if this disaster does happen.

"A large tsunami could flood sizeable areas of Marina del Rey and Long Beach to an elevation of 15 feet," said Rick Wilson, head of the CGS Tsunami Program.

"Flood levels for the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach could reach elevations of 12 to 15 feet, which would inundate almost all of the land in the ports and some of the surrounding communities," Wilson said. "Local officials have indicated that if both ports were shut down for one day, the economic loss to the county would be over $1 billion."

That's not the only warning from experts.

"The California Council on Science and Technology has called this site the riskiest such facility in California, given its close proximity to surrounding communities, also compared to Aliso Canyon," Senser said.

At Aliso Canyon, the five-mile radius around the site was where people had to evacuate. It's where people described a terrible smell and developing health problems, including cancer, before the 2015 blowout.

Compared to the population living at Aliso Canyon during the gas leak, the Playa del Rey oil storage facility is about five times larger, and also includes about half of Santa Monica, along with Marina del Rey, Playa del Rey, Westchester, Venice, Culver City, Inglewood and other Los Angeles neighborhoods.

It's not a hypothetical situation that something could go wrong, in fact, it already has, Senser said.

In January 2013, an explosion caused a 100-foot fireball to shoot in the air. More leaks were discovered in August 2015, then a month later, were found to be leaking again. In 2019, at a nearby location — not at the exact PDR site — but at a construction site near Via Marina and Tahiti Way in Marina del Rey, an oil well from the 1920s blew open, sending natural gas 100 feet into the air. Methane has also bubbled up in the areas around the facility, near the freshwater marsh, and environmentalists lit methane bubbles near the marina on fire.

Two people voiced last week that the site should remain open — both employed by SoCalGas. Mike Harriel, Senior Public Affairs Manager, is one of them.

"Folks who don’t like the method of restoration are throwing SoCalGas into the mix to try and move their agenda," Harriel said.

John Thompson, underground storage reservation manager for SoCalGas, thinks the site should remain open, describing that there are a number of generators that belong to Southern California Edison, another utility that uses the facility.

In December 2020, SoCalGas was fined $124 million by the CPUC, in addition to a $255 million penalty recommended in November 2020, for allegedly violating a decision that stopped the utility from advocating for energy efficiency building codes and appliance standards.

"The reality of the situation is we are not operating with an organization that can be dealt with in good faith," Senser said.

The blowout at Aliso Canyon and the settlement with SoCalGas is still a topic in 2021. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s Aliso Canyon Disaster Health Research Study team released a set of draft Health Study Goals and Priorities for public review and comment on March 18, officials announced last week.

"As required by the Court settlement with the Southern California Gas Company, the draft Goals and Priorities were determined by the Health Study’s Scientific Oversight Committee (SOC) and reflect input gathered from a series of community engagements with people who lived near and experienced the Aliso Canyon disaster," the county reports.

Susanne Cumming is a Sierra Club member who lives in Marina del Rey and wants the facility to close, citing how close it is to the airport and homes and just how disastrous it could be if there were a blow out like Aliso Canyon.

"Ask the governor to close down this gas facility," Cumming said. "Say it possess more risk."

Editor's Note: This story was updated with additional information about the 2019 oil well and clarification on the location.

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• SoCalGas Threatens Ballona Wetlands Activist With Arrest
• Photos: Activists Protest At Ballona Wetlands, Demand Entry
• Groups Challenge Restoration Plan For Ballona Wetlands