2 Suits Blame Gas Co. Storage Site for Fumes
With its rows of luxury homes, cliffside vistas and cool sea breezes, the Playa del Rey neighborhood of West Bluffs has all the makings of a real estate agent’s dream.
But in two pending court cases, some former residents are painting this affluent Westside community in a light that is much more stark. They have accused an adjacent Southern California Gas Co. facility of plaguing West Bluffs with airborne toxic substances and noxious odors--allegations that are contested by the gas company and other residents.
This week, a procedural hearing was held on the first of the lawsuits in Los Angeles Superior Court, and lawyers say a trial could be held this summer. Then, the plaintiff will claim that residents were regularly exposed to toxic substances that escaped from the company’s natural gas storage site at the foot of the bluffs. At the site, the company pumps the gas into porous rock far below the surface of the earth.
“Living up there is like living with a bottle of arsenic that has its top off and no label,” said one of the plaintiff’s lawyers, Ian Herzog.
Company Officials Criticize Suit
Gas company officials say the 5-year-old suit is based on faulty science and wrong assumptions. The facility has won special safety commendations from state regulators for 12 years running and does not leak, they say. Those previous and current residents who complain of sickening gas smells are most likely sniffing sewage and swamp gas, or odors from nearby Los Angeles International Airport, not anything from the storage facility, company officials say. Although the company does release gas into the air 10 to 15 times a month for maintenance purposes, officials say the amount is too small for neighbors to smell and not hazardous to their health.
“Our storage field is safe and not the source of health problems,” said Ed Van Herik, a spokesman for Sempra Energy, the parent company of Southern California Gas Co.
The case carries serious potential consequences for homeowners and developers of the nearby Playa Vista project, a massive planned community of housing and offices that would cover more than 1,000 acres between the bluffs and Marina del Rey. Already, longtime opponents of the project have sought to link Playa Vista to the gas company’s legal battle by charging that company gas is seeping below and above ground on the Playa Vista property, to the north and east. However, that charge is refuted by a city-commissioned study of the development site.
The gas facility, which is almost 50 years old, stores gas that is piped from out of state by forcing it deep into the wells and pockets of a former oil field. The gas is tapped during periods of heavy fuel use, when other supplies begin to run low. It is stored, pressurized, more than half a mile below the earth’s surface, where it occupies space in 460 acres of porous rock.
Gas company officials say the storage method is safe. But critics say that it has two serious flaws. First, they say that the stored gas absorbs high levels of benzene when it is exposed to remaining oil in the former oil field. Second, they say that the earth cannot contain the stored gas and it leaks above the surface.
For the dozens of bluff-area residents who have purchased $800,000 to $1-million homes along the quiet streets of Veragua Drive, Berger Avenue, West 79th and 80th streets and Zayanta Drive, the charges of environmental troubles are divisive. Many fear that the suits could trigger a decline in property values. Some residents complain regularly of chronic aches and pains and near fainting spells, while others insist they have never noticed anything amiss.
Roy Bagdasarian, who has lived on the bluffs for 12 years, said he has never encountered any gas-related health problems or bad odors. “In my view, the gas company has been nothing but a good neighbor,” Bagdasarian said.
Bagdasarian noted that the gas facility has been in existence since the 1940s and the residential development came along decades later. “My own philosophy has always been: ‘They were here first. I knew they’d be next door when I bought this lot and built this house.’ ”
On the other hand, homeowner Albert Jibilian complains that he was never told of potential health risks. He is not a party to either suit, but says he is worried that seeping gases are harming his health and has petitioned the state Public Utilities Commission to investigate. He has not been successful.
“I’d sell and move away right now if I could, but I can’t,” said Jibilian, who has lived on the bluffs for eight years. “I’ve got a prepayment penalty on my mortgage, so we have to stay for another two years.”
The first suit was filed by former West Bluffs resident Lynn Stadish, a 45-year-old anesthesiologist, who charges in court documents that she was made ill by fumes. The second suit was filed by another former resident who says that the gas company exposed his family to the risk of numerous diseases, including cancer, respiratory illness and birth defects. Both suits are being handled by the same law firm, and if the first suit is successful, lawyers say they will turn the second suit into a class action against the gas company.
Stadish said she rented a four-story bluffside house on Veragua Drive for about $5,500 a month. She says the house overlooked the storage facility, as well as a gas vent and charges that she developed lupus and a form of anemia because of exposure to benzene.
Stadish, who started renting in 1993, says that she grew progressively sicker in the 2 1/2 years she lived in the house, and finally moved when she was on the verge of blindness and too weak to leave her bed.
Stadish’s condition has improved with treatment, according to lawyer Amy Ardell. But her circulatory system has been forever compromised by exposure to benzene and she remains too weak to resume her full work schedule, Ardell said.
Gas company officials say that they sympathize with Stadish, but stress that the facility is not to blame for her sickness. They say that their gas contains only trace levels of benzene, less than what is found in automobile exhaust and less than what is found in the air in the rest of the Los Angeles Basin. State regulators say they have found no problems with the site. “To date, their facility has worked very well,” said Richard Baker of the Department of Conservation.
Playa Vista officials say the claims are part of a campaign by some environmental groups who want to see the open space preserved and the project halted.
Some of the critics who are complaining about the project’s proximity to the gas company are also charging that naturally existing methane gas pockets below the Playa Vista site could violently erupt from the ground.
Playa Vista officials say the risk is similar to that in many other locations in the city, and the danger will be reduced by a network of pressure-releasing vents.
