State, city, county settle gas leak case for $119.5M

LOS ANGELES -- Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced a $119.5 million settlement with the Southern California Gas Company on Wednesday, ending the state's litigation over the 2015 gas blowout from a ruptured well in the Porter Ranch neighborhood but leaving thousands of plaintiffs still lined up for private lawsuits.

If approved by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, the settlement will require that SoCalGas monitor methane at the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility fence line, create a new internal safety committee to remain in place for eight years, and refrain from shifting the cost of the legal fees to SoCalGas ratepayers, among other terms. State of California v. Southern California Gas Co., BC602973 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Dec. 7, 2015).

Midway through his announcement speech during a press conference at the state office building, Becerra said SoCalGas had mostly paid for the evacuation and shelter costs immediately after the blowout.

"As you know, they indicated that they had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to date to address those different aspects of this incident," Beccerra said. "All of that put together gives you a sense of what happens when something as devastating as the largest natural gas leak in the history of recorded time occurs.

The settlement did not include an order to shut down the Aliso Canyon Facility, an outcome Save Porter Ranch president and Porter Ranch resident Matt Pakucko said he wanted. "Our elected officials that are supposed to protect us sounded like they were making SoCalGas look like the hero riding in to protect California from pollution," Pakucko said after the press conference. "AG Becerra should be investigating SoCalGas for their negligence that allowed the blowout. ... They shouldn't be settling with them."

Pakucko claims the Aliso Canyon facility is still dangerous and should be shut down.

When asked by a reporter why a closure hadn't been part of the settlement, Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander, also present at the news conference, said people are "mismatching their concerns," and that the settlement was never intended to further the goal of shutting down the facility.

Englander said the lawsuit was intended to make sure enough money was earmarked to study the health and environmental impacts of the leak as well as mitigate the harmful effects.

He added that he was not satisfied with California regulators' inability to shut the facility down but that Gov. Jerry Brown had indicated in a July 2017 letter that a 10-year plan to to do so is already in place.

"The closure of Aliso Canyon within 10 years is the stated goal policy, according to a letter from Governor Brown to the state Energy Commission that dates to July 19th of last year," Englander said. "So the clock has already started."

Pakucko, however, said he wasn't convinced by that statement,.

"That was almost a year ago and nothing has been done with that," Pakucko said.

Throughout the conference, Becerra repeatedly emphasized the point that costs accrued by the state's legal team would not be passed on to the taxpayers, nor would SoCalGas customers be charged at a higher rate to offset the costs.

"The taxpayers will not have to foot the bill for the work done by our legal team," Becerra said.

The $119.5 million indicated in the settlement is said to be allocated to a long-term, $25 million health study designed to assess direct health impacts of the leak.

Other funds will go to a local air monitor network, a mitigation fund and civil penalties.

When asked if $25 million was enough to conduct the needed health study, Becerra replied: "The mitigation fund will have resources that might be available for things like the study if there is a need for more money."

He also said the settlement did not address the personal harm and injury damages cases brought by thousands of litigants.

"I want to make this clear: This does not resolve another crucial component that resulted from this incident and that is the personal harm and injury and damages that Angelenos suffered from this leak, whether you lived in Porter Ranch or not," Becerra said.

He said the settlement does not stipulate any legal actions to be taken to address the leak or its root cause.

"That is under the jurisdiction of the Public Utilities Commission and they are right now doing the investigative work to give an answer to the root cause of this particular incident," Becerra said. "From that may also come consequences including enforcement action CPUC may decide to take."

Private lawsuits will continue, a plaintiff's lawyer promised.

"The settlement between the City and County of Los Angeles, the State of California and Southern California Gas will not affect the class action or the hundreds of civil lawsuits filed on behalf of Porter Ranch and neighboring residents harmed as a result of the Aliso Canyon Gas Well Blowout -- our litigation against the utility company continues to move forward," says Brian Panish of Panish Shea & Boyle LLP.

Los Angles City Attorney Mike Feuer said he had three goals when his office first filed the suit against SoCalGas: That there be a judicially enforceable climate change mitigation plan, because SoCalGas was originally expressing reluctance to be legally bound to such a plan; that measures be put into place to prevent another leak from ever happening again; and that SoCalGas would be held accountable.

"This resolution achieves and surpasses those objectives," Feuer said.