title:  The Worst Environmental Disaster Since The BP Oil Spill Is Happening And The Media Is IGNORING It
text: One of the largest environmental disasters in American history is happening right now, and there is a great chance that you never heard of it thanks to corporate-owned media.There is a colossal leak of methane gas currently pouring out of the ground in Aliso Canyon, California, at an astonishing rate of 110,000 pounds per hour. The fallout is intense. 1700 homes in the area have been evacuated so far, prompting many lawsuits to be filed against the corporation that owns the faciliy.Southern California Gas Company is the entity that s responsible for the disaster, which began in October of 2015. A statement by SCGC in December said that stopping the leak would take at least 2 more months.Below you can see video footage of just how bad the leak is:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exfJ8VPQDTY&w=420&h=315]The severity of this can t understated. This single leak is accounting for 25 percent of the entire state s methane emissions, and has been classified as the worst environmental disaster since the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas as well, marking this as a signicant ecological threat.Anne Silva, spokesperson for SCGC, made the following statement: Our efforts to stop the flow of gas by pumping fluids directly down the well have not yet been successful, so we have shifted our focus to stopping the leak through a relief well.The relief well process is on schedule to be completed by late February or late March. Source: MotherboardThe part that is making it so difficult to deal with, is the fact that the well is 8,000 feet deep. This is preventing the normal disaster recovery method of plugging the leak with fluids from working, due to too much pressure coming up from underground. The hope is that the relief well will drain off some pressure from the main well, allowing the fluid plug to work as intended.If you thought this was the only methane leak in California, you were wrong. The reality is far worse.In Pasadena, 35 miles from the Aliso Canyon leak, investigators found a cluster of leaks at 4 miles or less from each other. Below is a map of them, courtesy of Earth Defense Fund:Image credit: EDFWhere the hell is the accountability for this? The map above should be a criminal offense.The story of Southern California Gas Company is a pretty damning one. EDF has found that more than 38 percent of the methane pipes that SCGC manages are more than 50 years old, and 16 percent are made from sub standard materials prone to leaks and corrosion. Over 150 million pounds of methane have been released by the leak so far, and that isn t counting the huge cluster of leaks shown above.Lets put this into perspective. If 1700 families had to evacuate a California town because of volcano suddenly springing up, it would be everywhere in the media. There would be a nightly obsession over it on cable news. Politicians on every level would be pledging to help, and doing everything they can to hasten relief efforts.If we had a terrorist act that caused 1700 people to have to evacuate an American town, we would already be invading multiple middle eastern countries that had nothing to do with it.Instead, we have 1700 people displaced by an ecological disaster caused by a corporation, and the media response is  What disaster? Featured image via Flickr