To the editor: The methane leak that pressured Newport Seashore residents to evacuate their houses final week underscores the specter of decaying oil and gasoline infrastructure (“Methane gasoline leak results in evacuations on a Balboa Peninsula road,” Oct. 23). It’s an issue California must take significantly.
Californians face an enormous menace from wells just like the one in Newport Seashore, which was reportedly plugged almost 100 years in the past — earlier than right this moment’s requirements for sealing wells had been in impact.
However much more urgently, California should take care of its almost 90,000 unplugged oil and gasoline wells that every one have to be cleaned up. Greater than a 3rd of those already sit idle, lots of which haven’t produced in a decade or extra. These wells can leak methane and harmful toxins like hydrogen sulfide and benzene that poison communities and the atmosphere.
California lawmakers and regulators have to act with urgency and ensure these idle wells are plugged to trendy requirements.
Happily, there’s a comparatively easy resolution: Make operators plug their idle wells sooner. These wells introduced them immense earnings after they had been producing, and paying for cleanup needs to be their duty.
Cooper Kass, Los Angeles
This author is a employees legal professional on the Middle for Organic Variety’s Local weather Legislation Institute.
