A proposed alternative plan to capture escaping gas from the natural gas leak in Southern California and then burning it separately has been rejected by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC). This was announced by Mohsen Nazemi, deputy executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District on Saturday at a meeting involving some of the affected public, Southern California Gas (SoCalGas) company officials and officials of AQMD, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.
The PUC has formally warned the AQMD in a letter about going ahead with a proposed new plan to try and fix the leak. The PUC said that the proposed new plan, which involved the use of a capture-and-burn strategy, could lead to a catastrophic explosion.
This is cited because the intensive efforts to fix the leak from when it first became visible on Oct. 23 caused damage to the well system. This damage had resulted in a situation where air could get mixed with methane in a catastrophically inflammable way. The PUC further said that it could only permit the alternative plan after its concerns about the design of that strategy were addressed satisfactorily, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The reason that alternative strategies for fixing the natural gas leak are being considered is because of the time that the current plan is taking. The current strategy that is being implemented by SoCalGas is to dig a relief well more than 8,500 feet under the ground next to the leak in the reservoir.
The plan is - once the new relief well is completed - to transfer the gas contents of the main reservoir to the new relief tank and then to plug the old tank permanently.
The plan that is currently being implemented is said to take until February for it to be completed. Because of the delay involved, all parties are exploring alternative strategies that could possibly fix the leak a lot quicker, according to KTLA.
