CSUN On Point

The Aliso Canyon gas blowout in 2015 is the largest natural gas leak in American history. Hundreds of Porter Ranch residents living a few miles away were affected by the blowout — mentally, physically, financially and politically.

“I am still worried about this situation,” CSUN Sustainability Institute’s Professor Loraine Lundquist said. “It’s still affecting residents in my neighborhood. It’s still leaking; it’s still causing all kinds of problems, and it’s still a risk when it comes to earthquakes, and it’s a fire hazard. We are still working to get the facility shut down.”

The chemicals released by the blowout have caused many health problems for the residents, and research on the long-term impact is still being conducted. “The biggest problems in terms of the people’s health is not the methane,” said Lundquist. “It’s all the other stuff that was released with the methane, because the methane is stored in depleted oil wells, and it has other chemicals that are included in it.”

SoCal Gas didn’t tell Porter Ranch residents exactly what chemicals were being leaked, Lundquist said. “SoCal Gas is actually not required to release information to the community, so we don’t actually know what all chemicals are stored in there, but we do know there are toxic, volatile, organic chemicals that occur in oil.”

Nearly four years after the gas blowout the residents of Porter Ranch remain concerned. Certain chemicals in oils can cause cancer.

“There are five teachers at Castle Bay Elementary School that we know had no cancer history in their families,” Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council member Cheri Derohanian said, “and five out of 34 teachers got cancer. One of them passed away.”

Derohanian said she recently moved to Granada Hills to get away from the gas leak, and because her children wanted to attend Granada Hills High School. She said her former neighbors have health issues anytime there is a gas leak.

When the gas leak first happened, in October 2015, many Porter Ranch residents left the area temporarily.

“We did not know what was going on,” Derohanian said,  “and my children were running the mile [track and field event] that same week in school. The school didn’t know [what was going on], and nobody else knew either. It was ridiculous that the gas company did not have a way to tell the residents.”

Some residents decided to relocate permanently, because they felt too sick to live near the gas field. Hundreds filed lawsuits, including some Los Angeles County firefighters who helped the residents evacuate their homes. “Out of 30,000 Porter Ranch residents, at least 10,000 have filed a lawsuit,” Derohanian said.

Many environmental activists are following the lawsuits. The Sunrise Movement’s Becca Lieb and Save Porter Ranch Co-Founder Matt Pakucko both said shutting down SoCal Gas facilities is the way to prevent another blowout from happening.

“The facility wasn’t really needed in the timespan of when the blowout happened,” said Lieb. “Some solutions would be to shut it down and to fully embrace the transition to clean and renewable energy… I hope that after the facility is shut down, people who are living in that community feel the difference in their air, and are able to enjoy the beautiful environment of the Valley.”

Pakucko said many other SoCal Gas facilities around Los Angeles “are in worse shape [than Aliso Canyon. The green energy solution is not just going to be for [the benefit of] the North Valley. It’s for everybody.”

“Shut down all these facilities,” Pakucko said, ” because the same chemicals are coming out of all SoCal Gas facilities…the chemicals are making people sick.”

Anchor: Leslie Estrada

Moderator: Matt Roth

Producer: Emmanuelle Yang

Social Media Editor: Leslie Estrada

Reporters: Rudy Aguado, Leslie Estrada, Mareo Ahmir Lawson, Matt Roth and Emmanuelle Yang

Climate change is a problem affecting the entire planet, but not everyone is educated on the subject.

A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the world has approximately a decade to get its act together before catastrophic climate changes begin to happen.

“It is the biggest story of our time, without question,” CSUN Physics, Mathematics and Sustainability Professor Loraine Lundquist said. “The reason media don’t cover it, is because it doesn’t get good ratings.” 

Many people, including some powerful ones, seem oblivious to the global warming issue. Websites like End Climate Silence promote a healthy discussion on the topic, and also provide links and other information on minimal changes people can incorporate into their everyday lives.

“As dire as the IPCC report was, what it is basically saying is, we do have a very narrow window now to get a handle on climate change,” said Sean Carlin, environmental activist and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps program.

California State University, Northridge was one of the first universities to partner with DC Solar to install 39 solar panel mobiles around campus. The goal was to educate and empower the community by promoting solar energy. The university established a recycling program in 1991, offering opportunities for students to volunteer. The Sustainability Center does community clean ups, and promotes the use of recycling bins and water-bottle refill stations on campus. They also suggest eating less meat for the good of the environment, by providing their Instagram followers with vegan recipes to try.

Animal agriculture is the one of the leading causes of greenhouse gases. The American diet is heavily meat-based. Shifting 320 million Americans to a more plant-based diet could save 91 million acres of land currently used for livestock cultivation. Raising livestock for food is also one of the leading causes of global deforestation. Nearly a third of biodiversity loss is linked to animal agriculture. Many CSUN students say they have started cutting down on their meat intake. They say they have not gone completely vegan, but are committed to buying more plant-based foods.

“I think that these small stories about single-use plastics, plant-based eating and innovation around that, electrification of vehicles, Tesla, Elon Musk, [make a difference],” artist and Valley Green conservationist Miles Lewis said. “People [like Musk] end up being on the news, and they all implicate climate change as sort of the larger topic, so hopefully that gets people identified with a way of being, and a change in industry.”

Moderator: Leonard Tesher

Producer: Andrea Tanchez

Associate Producer: Samantha Rodriguez

Anchor: Nicholas Logan

Social Media Editor: Tory Isaac

Reporters: Brandon Benitez, Tory Isaac, Nicholas Logan, Samantha Rodriguez, Andrea Tanchez and Leonard Tesher

While many consider climate change to be the most important issue of our time, not everyone agrees. Although former President Obama took an active role on the international scene to attempt to curb climate change when he signed last year’s Paris Agreement, President Trump’s actions during his first 40 days in office may signal a shift in U.S. policy, both domestically and abroad. And, according to a Gallup poll taken during last year’s elections, climate change failed to rank as a top issue among Democrat and Republican-leaning voters.

Despite this, California has implemented its own plan to combat climate change. The Associated Students at California State University, Northridge have as well. A new campus Sustainability Center is currently under construction and is scheduled to open in May 2017. With the opening of the center, CSUN could be considered a leader in sustainability efforts.

“It’s going to be the most innovative building on our campus, as well as in the CSU at this point,” said CSUN Director of Sustainability and Energy Austin Eriksson. “It’ll be the first building with composting toilets. It has the first grey water system on campus, so water that’s used in sinks will be used outside of the building for irrigation.”

The center will house CSUN’s Institute for Sustainability. Here, students will be able to find studies on sustainability, informational flyers, and even volunteer opportunities. The A.S. Recycling Center will also be located at the new Sustainability Center.

“It was recognized that there’s a lot of different groups on campus, and we all have the same goals to promote sustainability on campus and educate our students,” said Darien Siguenza,  Chair of the Associated Students Committee on Sustainability. “I think it’s going to be really awesome to have everyone under the same roof; and just to be able to have that collaboration and that same space, I think is going to be very beneficial for the future.”

With the new Sustainability Center, Associated Students and CSUN’s Institute for Sustainability hope to expand upon their current educational efforts and resources. However, while they recognize the importance of their recycling programs on campus, and acknowledge they can be improved with better signage, they want others to know this is only a small part of what should be done. They say other things like waste prevention and energy efficiency are more important. The manner in which the Sustainability Center will be powered reflects this belief. Since it will generate all of the energy it will use, it will be a net-zero energy building.

The campus community as a whole has welcomed and supported sustainability efforts at CSUN. Professor Loraine Lundquist, a physics and mathematics lecturer at the CSUN Institute for Sustainability, said this support is in stark contrast to the lack of support among the nation’s current political leaders.

“Over 12,000 papers have been published on the topic, and 97 percent of those papers agree with the consensus that first of all, our globe is getting warmer, and second of all, that we are the ones causing it,” she said. “But that is not the perception in the country right now, and that really does change our politics. There’s a lot of politicians that themselves have that skepticism, and it’s made it very hard to implement solutions, because a lot of the most important solutions are policy solutions.”

Moderator: Rosa Rodriguez

Producer: Arianna Takis

Anchor: Adam Hajost

Social Media Editors: Luzita Pineda and Lexi Wilson

Reporters: Jose Duran, Adam Hajost, Luzita Pineda, Rosa Rodriguez, Arianna Takis and Lexi Wilson

On February 18, SoCal Gas announced that it had permanently sealed the largest methane leak in US history – but not before thousands of Porter Ranch residents had been exposed to the leak for four months.

Some residents were evacuated, while others suffered with nausea, dizziness, nosebleeds and other physical illnesses related to the methane in the air.

“Nobody knew what was going on,” said Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council member Cheri Derohanian. “In fact, my 12-year-old twin girls, who were seventh graders at Porter Ranch Community School, were running the mile daily, and I was wondering why a school would let kids do that when everyone smells gas in the community. It was frustrating, it was frightening.”

One of the most frustrating aspects of the incident for residents was how preventable the leak was from the beginning.

“This well that leaked, had a safety valve on it that was taken off by choice,” said Dr. Loraine Lundquist from the CSUN Institute for Sustainability. “If that safety valve had been in place, it would have stopped the leak within hours.”

The leak has led to a lawsuit by residents, against SoCal Gas, that some experts believe will take years to complete.

“We’re just trying to help [Porter Ranch residents] band together to be able to advocate for themselves and get the compensation they deserve,” Frantz Law Group attorney Regina Bagdasarian said. “We want [SoCal Gas] to be responsible, not just by acknowledging responsibility, but by compensating people for the harms they suffered.”

Although it’s been almost a month since the leak was sealed, the problems for residents are not over. Some residents have started moving back, but a judge recently ordered SoCal Gas to pay expenses until mid-March for those who want more time. This week, crews have begun inspecting and cleaning up Porter Ranch playgrounds after spots of sticky and potentially toxic substances were found.

And some believe, as big of a problem as the gas leak was, it was just a small part of an even bigger issue.

“We are suffering from this incredibly urgent problem of imminent climate change, that literally does threaten to destabilize human civilization within the course of less than a century,” Lundquist said.

There may be an upside to all this, however – as some believe that the Porter Ranch gas leak offers an opportunity for change.

“I think people have to be their own advocate,” Bagdasarian said.

“This is an excellent time for residents of Los Angeles to band together, and demand that our city pledge to go to 100 percent renewable energy,” Lundquist said.

Moderator: Jasmin Dalton

Anchor: October Primavera

Producer: Jasmin Dalton

Social Media Editors: Anna Logan and October Primavera

Reporters: Harry Abelson, Jasmin Dalton, Glenna Dixon, Kiara Draper, Anna Logan and October Primavera