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By Gary Polakovic
Los Angeles Times
January 12, 2007
A Bay Area environmental group filed a lawsuit Thursday
alleging that Southern California Gas Co. operations near
Marina del Rey are polluting a local water table.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, charges that
the utility is in violation of Proposition 65, which prohibits
discharge or release of chemicals known to cause cancer or
birth defects.
Although the health risk at this time appears minimal, the
lawsuit says the contamination affects three aquifers that
could be used for drinking water as development occurs in the
area.
"Our goal is to enforce California law and stop the gas
company from releasing toxics into these aquifers," said
Jim Wheaton, president of the Oakland-based Environmental Law
Foundation, the plaintiff in the lawsuit.
"This storage facility is leaking like a sieve,
threatening groundwater with oil field chemicals."
But Peter Hidalgo, spokesman for the Gas Co., said the lawsuit
was without merit.
"The Gas Co. has yet to review the complaint," he
said, "but we can assert strongly that our underground
natural gas storage at Playa del Rey does not leak gas into
local aquifers or elsewhere."
The Gas Co. stores about 125 billion cubic feet of natural gas
underground at four sites in the Los Angeles Basin.
The one in dispute is near Jefferson and Lincoln boulevards
near Marina del Rey.
The company injects the gas into a depleted oil field about
6,000 feet below the surface for storage and pumps it out
during winter when demand is high.
The lawsuit alleges that this process causes petrochemicals,
particularly benzene, toluene, xylene and ethylbenzene, to
move up through aging well shafts, spread to aquifers beneath
Marina del Rey and Playa del Rey and reach the surface.
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