California regulators last Thursday announced they will hold a public hearing at the end of this month regarding a draft environmental impact report (EIR) on the operation of Southern California Gas Co.’s Playa del Ray gas storage field on a nearby residential area in between prime coastal locations and the Los Angeles International Airport.

The public meeting June 28 near the property site will be conducted by the California Public Utilities Commission to assess the draft EIR and determine whether it will allow the sale by SoCalGas of 36 lots located adjacent to the gas utility’s storage field that was originally developed at the outset of World War II before any of the post-war suburban Los Angeles development that now is in place.

Nearby property owners and citizens will be given a general overview and be able to raise questions about the draft EIR, which reviewed the property and the abandonment of many observation wells no longer needed for the operation of the storage field. The draft report also looks at the proposed residential and commercial development along side the gas storage facility.

CPUC staff and their environmental consultants will present the project overview and answer questions, along with the assigned CPUC Commissioner Loretta Lynch. A copy of the draft EIR was released earlier in the month for public review.

A SoCalGas spokesperson said that the property was essentially sold five years ago, but the CPUC approval of that sale and abandonment of the property was stalled by citizen action groups attempting to stop a massive nearby residential/commercial development called “Playa Vista.” The groups asked the CPUC to hold up approval pending a more thorough EIR that looked closely at the abandoned gas wells and alleged migration of natural gas from the storage field to the newer, larger community east of the storage field that has been under development for a number of years.

The gas utility has had sales agreements in place for at least some of the lots since 1999, said the utility spokesperson, who noted that the combined book value of the property was $9.2 million in 1999, half of which SoCalGas proposed go to its utility ratepayers in the form of lower rates and the rest go to shareholders of its parent, Sempra Energy.

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