September 4, 2020

Dear Mayor Garcetti, Los Angeles City Council and LADWP Board of Commissioners,

We write to express our support for the City Council motion (CF-20-1099) introduced by Council President Nury Martinez that calls for a report detailing the events, developments, and timeline of the ongoing leak at the Valley Generating Station in Sun Valley operated by the LA Department of Water and Power. We further emphasize support for the motion’s call to shut down the Valley Generating Station to repair the leak as soon as possible. This first step is imperative and will go a long way to show the City’s interest to rebuild public trust and meaningfully protect public health and worker safety. Restoring public trust is essential since LADWP has admitted to knowing about the leak before the call from scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) and did not inform the public. The total emissions of methane and other toxic chemicals, like benzene and formaldehyde, or their health risks to the community, will never really be known because, as LADWP has admitted, they are not required to measure fugitive emissions. Yet, it is clear that fugitive emissions are significant sources of pollution and dangerous; otherwise the State, JPL, and NASA would not be conducting these studies. This is why we also support the motion (CF-20-1107) introduced by Council member Monica Rodriguez requiring air monitoring of the Valley Generating Station and have provided critical suggestions for how to proceed below. LADWP must protect public health as they continue to cut their pollution and ultimately transition to 100% real clean energy.

Methane gas leaks are not new to Los Angeles, and the recent gas blowout at the SoCalGas Aliso Canyon gas storage facility taught us just how harmful methane and their associated toxic chemicals and emissions can be. LADWP’s gas comes from SoCalGas. We now know that the gas transported by SoCalGas to and from storage facilities and to generating stations contains chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects, or other serious harm.

Specifically, mandatory reporting by Prop 65 requires SoCalGas to disclose to customers via bill inserts that the gas at SoCalGas infrastructure and piped to homes and gas plants  contains cancer causing chemicals such as formaldehyde and carbon monoxide. A document posted to the SoCalGas website titled Facts about Proposition 65 further details that benzene and soot are also present in its gas. Additionally, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) requires emissions disclosure for large point-sources of pollution, and their database reveals a toxic soup of chemicals routinely emitted from the Valley Generating Station. Large ongoing leaks will only increase the concentration of air toxics in the surrounding community and raise the risk for potential health problems compounded by the current pandemic. Table 1 below details the emissions reporting of the Valley Generating Station to the SCAQMD for 2017 and 2018 as well as the associated human health risks with these emissions. There is currently no data available for 2019.

The report-back by LADWP on the ongoing leak must include an acknowledgment of these associated chemicals and carcinogens, their health risks, and an estimate of the quantities in which these chemicals have leaked at the work site and in the surrounding communities.

After the gas leak at Valley Generating Station was disclosed on August 24 at the LADWP Board Meeting, Food & Water Action surveyed 1,499 voters within a 8.0-mile radius of the gas plant. Of the 878 that replied to our outreach, 96 said they were feeling adverse symptoms and 28 of them said they would call 1-800-cut-smog to report their symptoms and odors to SCAQMD. The communities of Pacoima and Sun Valley are already heavily impacted by pollution and exposure to toxics, and as mentioned in the motion, cumulative effects should also be investigated.

To Council member Rodriguez’s motion, we urge the development of an independent, continuous air monitoring system within and surrounding the station that will examine all known chemicals, methane, and particulate matter emitting from the Valley Generating Station that will be made available to the public in real time on an easily accessible web page. The monitoring system should be set up by a trusted, independent third party, rather than managed by LADWP, as the public has lost trust in LADWP’s ability to be forthcoming about the harms created by this ongoing leak. We expect this monitoring to eventually be expanded to all gas plants in LA.

Continuous air monitoring is critical to understanding the health impacts to workers and communities because it provides data over a long period of time that can show fluctuations or spikes in pollution across various weather, pressure patterns and infrastructure failures. We learned too well that the Aliso Canyon gas blowout air monitoring was handled poorly when the California Council of Science and Technology dismissed it for not being continuous, but instead conducted in snapshots, showing isolated data for one time and place. A snapshot approach will be meaningless in evaluating the impact to public health. Continuous real-time monitoring will also help expose new leaks when they occur in real time.

Further, since this is not just a methane leak, but a release of harmful chemicals and carcinogens, we reiterate the seriousness of shutting down the Valley Generating Station to make repairs. This is a top priority. Air monitoring implementation should not be prioritized above the shut-down of this facility to make those repairs. It often takes a lot of time to set up air monitoring programs. The community and workers on site must not be sacrificed in the meantime.

Thank you for your consideration of these issues. We look forward to getting to the bottom of this ongoing leak and addressing the harm caused to public health, the environment, and our climate.

Sincerely,

Jasmin Vargas, Senior Organizer
Food & Water Action
jvargas@fwwatch.org