Just How Much Gas Flows Below?

Playa Vista’s first tenants have moved in. If any of them worried that the ground below them contained methane gas, they were reassured by leasing agents that, yes, there’s gas, but meters and alarms provide advance notice of any leaks.

The city of Los Angeles has been similarly soothing. Last spring, a report released by the city’s chief legislative analyst said the methane under Playa Vista’s proposed buildings could easily be mitigated. Shortly afterward, the City Council approved issuing the first $135-million installment of $428 million in tax-exempt “community facilities” (or Mello-Roos) bonds to build its infrastructure. But documents recently obtained by the Santa Monica Bay-Keeper from the State Lands Commission point to a more complicated and troubling situation.

In 1993, the environmental impact report done by Playa Vista’s then-developer said there were only small amounts of methane on the property.

By 1999, however, critics charged that the problem was far more serious. In response, the city Department of Building and Safety hired Houston-based Exploration Technologies Inc. (ETI) to conduct new methane studies and act as “peer reviewer” of others already completed.

In April 2000, the company issued its preliminary findings. ETI found methane seeps much larger than any previously reported, one about 1,000 feet long, and a second slightly smaller, in the area east of Lincoln Boulevard and south of Jefferson Boulevard.

The company’s president, Victor Jones, hypothesized that methane was flowing to the surface via a fault running westward under Lincoln and that the gas was coming from deep underground leaks in the Southern California Gas Co. storage facility at Playa del Rey.

On the verge of issuing the Mello-Roos bonds, the City Council instead asked the city legislative analyst to oversee a new round of studies done by Playa Capital Co.’s original consultants.

ETI was retained to conduct additional studies of its own, as well as serve as peer reviewer for the work done by Playa Capital’s team. Then-council member Mike Feuer appointed Jones to serve on the legislative analyst’s review committee.

Last spring, the legislative analyst’s office released its conclusions. Jones’ initial hypothesis, it said, was wrong. There is no fault zone under Lincoln, and gas samples taken from the storage facility at Playa del Rey did not match those taken from the big seeps east of the boulevard. The report concluded that “no significant fault is possible under the entire Playa Vista development project site.” The City Council then approved issuance of the Mello-Roos bonds, generating funds needed by the developers.

Although Jones sat on the review committee, he and his team contributed almost nothing to the city legislative analyst’s report. He was never invited to any meetings, nor were due dates for reports given to him or his team. When Jones volunteered to fly to Los Angeles, at his own expense, to testify before the council acted on the Mello-Roos bonds, he was told by the city legislative analyst to stay put. At least two council members, Feuer and Cindy Miscikowski, say they saw none of Jones’ follow-up studies or hints that these studies raised any new significant concerns.

In fact, Jones brought up a number of problems in his second report. For example, although ETI acknowledged that there was no fault below Lincoln Boulevard, it reported finding a new seismic “disruption zone” directly under the large methane seeps.

Paul A. Witherspoon, professor emeritus of petroleum engineering at UC Berkeley and a member of the ETI team, explained that “there are multiple faults beneath Playa Vista that are bringing gas to the surface.”

This is because the Ballona Wetlands and surrounding land--what’s now becoming Playa Vista--were, until modern times, the mouth of the Los Angeles River. Over eons, innumerable layers of sediment have been deposited there. They have slumped in places, creating the fault zone.

The methane comes from the Pico Sands, a geological formation 500 to 3,000 feet underground that stretches along the coast for many miles, according to ETI. Four and a half miles south of Playa Vista lies the 80-acre El Segundo gas field. Wells dug into the Pico Sands have produced more than 23 billion cubic feet of methane, and chemical analysis shows that methane from the two places is similar. It’s not that the El Segundo field is leaking but rather that gas in the whole geological formation is slowly migrating westward.

In a recent interview, Witherspoon expressed concern that during an earthquake the “large number of faults in the area could allow a cloud of methane to come to the surface and overwhelm a building’s mitigation system.”

Citing research on the Los Angeles Basin published in the U.S. Geological Survey, he said just because a fault had not been active recently did not mean it could not again become active during an earthquake.

Witherspoon also emphasized just how much methane was at issue. In January 2001, after rains had flooded much of the property between Jefferson Boulevard and the Westchester Bluffs, he walked out on the land and noticed big bubbles breaking the surface in many places. He called for an observation well to be dug; it soon produced more than nine liters of gas a minute. “It’s the largest seep I’ve ever seen in my whole career,” he told me, big enough, he surmised, to be a commercially viable gas field. Drilling a gas well into the Pico Sands would help deplete methane to more manageable levels, he said, and reduce the danger of a methane cloud rising in an earthquake.

In his original report, Jones and his ETI colleagues recommended not building on a 60-acre piece of Playa Vista that seemed to contain most of the methane. When the city of Los Angeles and Playa Capital, the developers, said this was not a viable option, Jones narrowed his analysis. His second report--the one the city legislative analyst did not mention--says that the most serious methane flows occur on about 1.5% of the total property, or about 16 acres.

Data in the report cast doubt on the effectiveness of mitigation systems planned for these areas, where apartments and condos will be built. ETI reviewed the “logs” of 120 test wells, dug by another firm, to evaluate the effectiveness of the mitigation systems. The wells were designed to bleed off methane gas from a belt of sand and gravel known as the 50-foot aquifer and to serve as mitigation systems for structures to be built over the most active seeps.

But ETI found that most of the test wells had failed because they quickly filled with sediment or flooded with water, making accurate measurement of gas impossible. This suggests that the wells might not be suitable for mitigation purposes. ETI’s report recommends extensive testing of vent wells and monitoring devices to mitigate leakage from the biggest seeps.

What’s needed now is full disclosure. Playa Capital and Los Angeles should release all consultant reports, city staff reports and correspondence concerning environmental studies on the Playa Vista property.

Moreover, either the state or federal courts should hold an evidentiary hearing to officially record the documents and ensure the public’s access to them. All consultants to the project should be subpoenaed and required to testify under oath at the hearing. Only then can they speak openly without fear of being sued by Playa Capital.

Many parties will benefit from such full disclosure. The city of Los Angeles needs to know what liabilities it faces when it approves construction and releases the Mello-Roos bonds. Insurance companies need to review all the data, not just the city legislative analyst’s reports. Potential investors can be more secure in their financial decisions if they have all relevant information in hand.

State politicians and the nonprofit Trust for Public Land are currently negotiating with Playa Capital to buy all the Playa Vista land west of Lincoln and some to the east. More reliable information might affect appraisals. And Playa Vista’s prospective residents have a right to know what’s under them.