Readers React: The best mitigation for the Aliso Canyon gas leak: Shut the well down

To the editor: The California Air Resource Board’s plan to penalize Southern California Gas Co. for nearly 100,000 tons of methane pollution from the Aliso Canyon leak won’t work as drafted. Following the worst gas leak in our country’s history, the air board’s proposed “offset” approach undermines our potential to achieve real and permanent emissions reductions. (“How can gas company offset emissions from the Aliso Canyon leak? Regulators offer a plan,” March 21)

The proposal to have the gas company pay for dairy manure digesters — which present risks of methane leaks and toxic spills — to reduce emissions from these facilities over “several years” is dubious and does nothing to stop the methane emissions that started coming from the Aliso Canyon site years before this leak.

A real plan would require the facility’s permanent shutdown so those who live nearby can return home safely. Furthermore, the air board should require the gas company to fund the construction of community solar gardens that would provide needed economic relief to low-income residents and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.

Alexandra Nagy, Los Angeles

The writer is the Southern California organizer for Food and Water Watch.

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To the editor: The Aliso Canyon leak was a tragedy, but it is good to hear that remediation will be made.

The 2014 documentary “Cowspiracy” focuses on how dairy and agriculture are often ignored as a cause of climate change; This is the first I have heard of any effort from the state to control emissions from agriculture.

Remediation is good, but it just gets us back to where we should have been at this time. We need to continue to push for a fee on carbon as it comes out of the well or mine. Increasing the prices of things that are bad for us is the best way to decrease consumption.

Grace Lorentzen, Long Beach

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