Los Angeles hid power plant methane leak for a year
latimes.com
latimes.com
For example the Sriracha company settled in the middle of nowhere, the north San Jose water treatment facility was in the middle of nowhere but now you have housing next to them and people complaining about smells or pollution.
To avoid this you’ll need better more stringent zoning laws with bigger buffer zones.
It seems useful to me to allow people to build houses in less desirable locations, and it also seems... not wrong(?) to expect people to deal with a “nuisance” that they knew existed when they purchased their house (especially if they got their house for way cheaper than they would have otherwise!)
I understand the impulse of people wanting to make their nuisances disappear, but I’m not sure this particular problem (zoning where people choose to build near industry) is one that needs solving.
So we end up with a pretty ugly societal tradeoff if we only look at this as some sort of voluntary choice, when it is not really so.
The interesting question (to me at least) is how, and how much, do we optimize our redistribution to help less well-off folks?
I think you need to take a whole-system approach here. A dollar spent improving air quality next to this power plant might be a great investment, or it might be way down the list vs. say funding universal healthcare, which would help with other (potentially more serious) health issues too.
QUALYs are a good tool for assessing the impact of a dollar of spend as it pertains to heath outcomes, but they are not the only lens. But until you have unlimited dollars, you need some framework for allocating them (after first deciding how much redistribution should be done in the first place).
In general, I think more choices are better than fewer, so having the choice to in a cheaper but more noisy neighborhood is probably better than being priced out entirely and having to move to rural CA where you can afford rent. (At least, revealed preferences show that most residents think that it’s the preferable option).
Problem: the only food poor people can afford is wonderbread. Solution: only accredited investors may now buy wonderbread.
If you only make it illegal to build housing near pre-existing industry, then what? That's basically a let them eat cake argument (not saying that that's what you're suggesting), because now there aren't cheap options near industry, and unless zoning changes allow for much more housing in the non-industrial areas, then the supply of housing goes down, the price goes up, and poor people just have to deal (all in the name of being saved from industry).
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl...
Americans love their class symbols, and chief among them neighborhood. It's therefore absolutely necessarily that public housing be sprinkled around evenly.
Meanwhile, in the Austrian example given in the link above, Singaporean home subsidization, and other successful cases what you find are schemes that manage to create and maintain an admixture of incomes. There are different ways[1] to accomplish that and they're not all easy, but it does seem like a necessary requirement for success.
[1] As in the Austrian example, you can remove income requirements after move-in, so that people aren't forced out as they move up the income ladder. Or rather than subsidize rent you can subsidize ownership. By having an ownership stake people are incentivized to maintain the property, and even if they move they'll be replaced by someone with a similar income (or at least an income above the initial ceiling). Unfortunately, many liberals who promote subsidized housing scoff at permitting people to continue to benefit from that initial subsidization after their income has increased. But that resistance is precisely the kind of policy dynamic that concentrates poverty!
"Sometimes really loud jets take off really early" is not something that you would want to put into a realty listing, and is not necessarily something that would happen when you see the house. It might have been disclosed somewhere, but do you know how much paperwork there is with buying a house?
I can easily see someone not realizing that they would have this issue until after they move in. As much as they "should have known", they truly may not have.
Likewise with power plants, "You'll get a stench when the wind blows the wrong way" is again not something you advertise and not necessarily something you'd notice when you see the house.
(Of course, "You have to disclose all this crap" is part of why there is so much paperwork, which might or might not include some of it now...)
I wouldn't buy a house without looking at the surrounding area in detail, just like I wouldn't buy a house without having an inspector check it out.
But even that only goes so far-- e.g. it didn't capture that the local high school had suspended night games while lights were being replaced and after they restarted it produced a large amount of noise weekly. Fortunately we're far enough away and the buildings are well constructed enough that it's not an issue. ... but I would have missed it equally for a property closer to the school.
This is a place where I think cities should have wide-scale long-term noise studies and maps. It's an unreasonable cost to expect every buyer to conduct a local noise study, especially since you'd really need to run it for minimum of a week if not a month.
Lastly, many such maps already exist: https://maps.bts.dot.gov/arcgis/apps/webappviewer/index.html...
An appropriate study takes weeks or months, since it would still be bad news to find out after the fact that one week out of the month or every other month has serious noise problems. -- which is an unreasonable amount of delay to stick on the private transaction (in particular, as a buyer you'll be sniped by someone less cautious).
Moreover, the data needed is essentially the same for all properties in an immediate area. This is a natural shared cost, and redoing it once off for each would be extraordinary wasteful.
Finally-- this entire thread sub-thread is about reducing state intervention by buyers being empowered to not purchase places where they're going to have problems with the noise. They can't do that without the information, they can't gather the information themselves on a reasonable time scale. The buyer can't demand the seller provide it (because by the time they meet the seller it's too late to start collecting it).
I don't see this as too much different from things like flood maps (which require rather expensive flyover lidar and historical watershed information, etc. to construct) that cities already provide.
> Lastly, many such maps already exist:
Yes, I'm aware. Which is also why I didn't think it was unreasonable to suggest. (though the DOT maps are understandably focused just on highway noise).
While sound pollution is a concern to some, and regulated in some cases. IF this were on the ballot in my city, I would vote no, as I don't think it is a productive use of civic funds.
It seems that it is a zero sum initiative that would provide a marginal benefit to a very small minority of citizens.
In this case it would benefit people who are: sensitive to noise,have the luxury to choose between options, know and use the service, and afraid or disinclined to talk to locals.
It would also disadvantage people who are willing to put in more due diligence or have fewer options.
I see this a very different than flood maps, which ensure safety and help mitigate massive costs of rebuilding communities.
That said, perhaps there is a commercial market for such information. How much would you pay for such a map before buying a house?
Part of the problem though is with the exception of people who are weirdly sensitive[1] or keep unusual hours, most people just don't know that sound would be an issue for them until they're in a situation where sound is an issue for them.
The end result of this is a significant amount of cost on the public arising out of disputes, including distorting pressure on zoning.
Munis do astronomical amounts of data collection already, e.g. to maintain culverts, curbs, and storm drains they have street-view like data collection performed. They already do targeted sound studies (e.g. for roadways and public facilities). Some urban areas have gunshot detection and localization networks.
It might well be possible to make a case that a sound study could lower costs to the public by lowering code enforcement costs and reducing zoning conflicts (esp. if the marginal cost of adding it on top of other data collection programs was minimal).
[1] I wouldn't say that I am particularly sensitive, but being in a quiet location was part of my justification for the purchase that I was trading off against other considerations-- so I would have been unhappy if it didn't turn out to be what I expected. ... I'm happy with the result, and having lived here a few years I think I significantly underestimated how nice it would be.
This is not a zero sum initiative.
Given that the data is already being collected, making it available to the public requires relatively little additional effort. The primary value in doing so is to document what measures have been taken, how effective they are, and to motivate public policy decisions about what further measures to take.
The same information is useful for private transactions. This is how most people will use the data, but is not the main public policy reason for having collected it.
For most people it is another thing that they won't think about.
I could see people overlooking it, even if it was shoved in their faces. Buying a home is an overly emotional process where people are influenced by inconsequential factors("I love the color", etc) but overlook serious flaws.
I'm familiar with both definitions of the word.
Homonyms that are close in spelling can be typographical errors, and, because they aren't as visually-wrong as non-words, are particularly likely to escape notice when they are.
They can also be a different class of errors.
> I'm familiar with both definitions of the word.
You mean “the definitions of both words”, surely?
> You mean “the definitions of both words”, surely?
This is not how reasonable people act.
You can think that this instance doesn't deserve the nitpicking. But getting all huffy and accusing the other side of being unreasonable seems to me to be rather over-sensitive.
It's not a problem as such but definitely something I wouldn't have possibly known about before moving in.
Anecdotal, but the HOA I'm living in holds meetings about airport pollution. It's a major airport, that pre-dates these houses. It's almost directly in the flight path. They had to know that an airport... has planes landing and taking off?
It's not even that noisy as there are noise abatement procedures that are pretty effective. But as long as the noise level is above the birds they will complain.
Flight paths do not tend to be marked on maps.
(Note, I used to contract for a small airline. Noise is more complicated than you'd think.)
In an ideal world, I think that would be an excellent place for deaf people to live. They're not disturbed by the noise, it would be cheaper than other areas, and living in a community of other deaf people seems like something many would really enjoy.
The typical regulation approach has no room for adjustments like these, and I think it's bad for everyone.
My impression is that the deaf mostly date other deaf people.
Then whoever want to live there under those conditions can do so.
To me, this is better than letting the area go to waste.
I imagine it would be a good deal for deaf people, but if it's the best deal for for some poor people, that's also good in my book.
I don't fully understand your "political Trojan horse" phrase, but we probably have different underlying philosophies.
You don’t usually buy sight unseen.
I know it sounds ridiculous that someone wouldn't understand that moving next to a naval base would put you under a flight path, but I'm sure it happens.
(It would be kind of embarrassing to admit to that as well).
Too often things like this get buried in a mountain of paperwork, and while they SHOULD read through it all, the average buyer won't take the time. Americans (maybe people in general) are lazy.
this booklet could then be provided to interested buyers for review, with the stipulation that any serious distortions/omissions could be subject to sanctions and legal recourse. this isn't far off from what we do now, but the standardization away from overly wordy legalese would be a material advance. we're collectively under the false impression that legalese protects us from risk, but it's more a form of regulatory capture for the legal industry.
In California, it is not unusual to receive a packet six inches thick.
In "other" states, a couple dozen pages will suffice.
I think your standardization idea is an excellent one.
alternatively use WHISPER technology helicopters to transport passengers to and from the plane at height
But actually that wiki page says the judgement regarding "coming to the nuisance" was based on precedent set by a different case almost 100 years earlier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spur_Industries,_Inc._v._Del_E....
Here's an interesting paper that discusses the case's relationship to the Coase theorem: Coming to the Nuisance: An Economic Analysis from an Incomplete Contracts Perspective, https://www.dartmouth.edu/~csnyder/491.pdf
A similar things happens when small communities are encroached by commuters - newcomers get upset about things the locals have "always done", and it almost invariably ends up becoming a class thing.
I have a relative who has lived in the same home for almost 50 years. She basically owns a hill with her house on top - it is about 2 acres. Until a few years ago, she'd been routinely burning leaves and lawn debris (or, later had the kid who did her lawn work do it).
It didn't matter until some neighbors sold to a developer who put up commuter-McMansions across from her. It threatened to become a huge issue with the new people making bullshit claims about fire risk and whatnot. She stopped, I helped put up a tall privacy fence at a strategic point (that they also hate, but can't do anything about) and she'll be fine.
Who was right? Well... I don't think there is a right answer, only a negotiated one.
No doubt. My point is exactly that you have to find a balance somewhere, and it can't just be first come first serve. Because of fire risk we have a law that there can't be trees less than X meters from a house. That means someone can take a lot, build a house on the border and then force the neighbor to remove some trees. For the laws to work well together it should be required that someone building a house outright owns or at least buys the rights to the area that now needs to be cleared of trees. The Sriracha example is another tricky one. Just because when you started there was no one around you doesn't mean you get to pollute the air around you at will, but maybe industrial zoning of the area would have made that use ok. It's all a balancing act. Since local zoning tends to be both short-sighted and corrupt these issues crop up a lot.
But since they control the construction around them, they can do their own zoning after a fashion to avoid worst case scenarios like condo balconies downwind from their exhaust.
I’m gonna fault Sriracha here a bit for cheaping out not preventing a problem. Land speculators can’t buy land that isn’t for sale. And they can’t use dirty tricks against another corporation to force a sale, like they might against private land owners.
so in theory the airports could modify their schedules and air paths so as to game the private housing market? buy affected houses while under your paths, then sell after changing your paths, repeat?
You can’t win.
Not just huge industries.... literally people buying land next to a farm (which has been there for 100+ years), then compain due to animal noises and smell.
Zone the whole world as industrial zone, climate crisis solved.
> A Third of California Methane Traced to a Few Super-Emitters
Between remote sensing and more localized lower cost handheld and IOT sensors, this seems like an area which could be strongly improved for fighting climate change.
https://hackaday.io/project/12568-portable-ecological-labora...
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/greenhouse-gas-inve...
The ability to check the self-reported emissions with remote sensing is new, and has led to a recalibration (ahem) of self-reported emissions.
The technology for remote sensing of CH4 is very exciting and it's being pushed forward in a lot of different ways. As you pointed out, you need sensors at various scales (in situ, airborne, space), calibration of retrieved concentrations (it's not a direct measurement), and inversions to find out what the sources are, given that you observe a certain set of concentrations. It's a complex problem!
It's not clear, to me at least, that there should be criminal penalties for medium sized leaks like in TFA. I don't know at all what the regulations are.
I did pick up this "For reporters subject to the California Cap-and-Trade Program, submitted data are verified by a CARB-accredited independent third-party verifier." Is it the remote sensing satellite that is a third-party verifier?
Here's a link, which you may have seen, about how individual facility monitoring can work, when you need quantitative flux estimates:
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/methane/ab1496-rese...
See at the bottom -- a third-party will fly a plane in circles around the site to measure all concentrations in a surface enclosing the site. The concentrations, plus wind speed, give the site emissions. (I think that's intuitive, but it's also the divergence theorem from vector calculus.)
That's a lot of work to get just one day's emissions. And there are technical issues already because you want to get the whole surface concentrations+windspeed at the same time, but you can't, because the plane has to circle the site over many hours.
Despite those cautionary footnotes, this approach is used in calibration/validation of the concentration/emission relationship. Getting it all quantitatively right, as opposed to just seeing a plume, is a complex problem. People are still exploring how it can all work together (space, airborne, in situ, plus modeling).
methane is estimated to cause about 25% of pollution effects, so 1/3 of that is on the order of 8% of california's pollution effects, which means addressing these super-emitters could be impactful, though not game changing.
It was trying to illustrate that although leaks are a fractal phenomenon, you can make significant progress by starting at the top few. For more on this, see the abstract of the Nature paper at:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1720-3
You'll notice the abstract focuses on what we'd call the "80/20" nature of the problem.
Going all the way to risk (of warming?) would enlarge the scope of the investigation a lot. I think I've seen talks by Riley Duren, the PI, where he gives some percentage breakdowns of the form: "CH4 is x% of GHG potential over the next Y years and in our study region, z% of CH4 came from these sources."
it's the same tried-and-true sensationalist tactic of making the issue de jure outsized relative to the danger. it's worked with aids, 9/11, covid, etc. fear sells.
again, 8% reduction at the limit is nothing to sneeze at, but it's not by itself going to change our lives materially (except for those nearby, reason enough to adjure action). that's why the sensationalism was added, to make the story seem more relevant than it is. but we as citizens should not, and do not, need that kind of manipulation to do the right thing. it's cynical and infantalizing.
The LAT didn't say anything about whether the emission levels they suggest (~100 kg/hour = ~200 m^3/hour) are large from a health perspective, and they didn't say anything about the actual risk from CH4.
A BOE calculation shows that if the wind is 5km/hour, and the CH4 disperses over a cross-section 100m x 20m (very tight), then the steady-state concentration in the plume would be about 20ppm, which is a bit over the overall atmosphere (~2ppm). The NIOSH maximum safe concentration, however, is 1000ppm.
This makes me guess that the leak isn't very consequential from a health POV. It would be nice to have the LAT ask someone who knows more!
This would align the incentive system very quickly!
some CEO arranges for some extremely damaging behavior, then tells on himself?
You are partially correct. It is corrupt at all levels, union and management. Laziness and incompetence all around.
Going to need a source.
Seems unlikely...
The reasoning is that small scale power generation produces other pollutants (NOx, etc) that are even more tightly regulated than the methane.
This plant still should have been able to secure a permit to flare the methane (thus converting it to CO2 + soot) which would at least be better for global warming than releasing the methane directly
There are never ending complaints from the residents about the asphalt plant.
The town council soliciting bids to have paving done got only one quote - from the company that operate the asphalt plant. They offered to truck the asphalt in from their other plant in the next town 45 minutes away, with all the trucking costs at the town’s expense.
Nimbyism is out of control.
- Headline: "Los Angeles hid a methane leak for a year"
- "Power revealed last month that its power plant had been leaking methane gas for at least three years"
- "The plant’s compressor units had been leaking gas “for the last couple years,” one staffer said. The utility had a plan in place to fix the compressors later in the year but"
- "especially because utility staff said they discovered the leak in August 2019, a full year earlier. Staffers said they didn’t notify the public because they didn’t believe anyone was at risk"
So, it has been leaking for years. But they only discovered it a year ago. They cannot hide what they do not know, hence the headline.
Although if I was the editor, I'd have chosen "Power plant leaked methane for years" rather than "Someone hid it for a year", but I guess that's the angle they've chosen (or the former was already known, so not "news").
I'm not sure I understand the outrage. Methane is a very strong greenhouse gas, but it's not dangerous to residents in the area, unless the leak was so extremely large as to pose a fire hazard, or displace oxygen.
You answered your own question.
It's a potent greenhouse gas, and of course we should try to eliminate leaks. But that is a global effect, and on a global scale, this was not a massive leak at all, it was infinitesimal.
Each and every well-maintained, perfectly-functioning coal-fired power plant in this country is worse. The million of cars in the LA-area are worse.
I just think the article is giving an improper impression of the dangers of methane (or even benzene, or whatever else is leaking).
Some info about methane for you:
>Methane is nontoxic, yet it is extremely flammable and may form explosive mixtures with air. Methane is also an asphyxiant if the oxygen concentration is reduced to below about 16% by displacement, as most people can tolerate a reduction from 21% to 16% without ill effects.
So not totally harmless.
Trying to sweep the problem under the rug instead of fixing the leak isn't a great call, either.