Los Angeles – Earlier today, members of a community-based stakeholder group that has been advising SoCalGas on the Angeles Link Project – its dubious, expensive and unsustainable foray into piping hydrogen through Los Angeles and beyond – walked out of their most recent meeting with the company. The groups also sent a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission calling on them to reject SoCalGas’s request to move to Phase Two of the project despite conducting a rushed and reckless Phase One. 

“The fundamental flaws in this process, paired with SoCalGas’s lack of accountability, render this engagement illegitimate,” the letter states. “SoCalGas has repeatedly disregarded CPUC requirements, basic community safety standards, and principles of environmental justice.”

Groups included Food & Water Watch, Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, Communities for a Better Environment and Protect Playa Now. 

SoCalGas has failed to be transparent during Phase One of the Angeles Link Project, including refusing to engage other vital stakeholders in the process, particularly ratepayers, those who would be living around the proposed pipelines, and tribal communities. 

Andrea Vega, Food & Water Watch Southern California Senior Organizer said, “For nearly two years now Food & Water Watch and several of the organizations have been part of the aggravating stakeholder process for SoCalGas’ Angeles Link Hydrogen Project. SoCalGas has failed to address the full scope of environmental and public health risks that the Angeles Link hydrogen project could impose on communities across Los Angeles and beyond. Despite their claims otherwise, the Angeles Link project is an attempt to keep us locked into a future of fossil fuels, not provide clean, safe energy.” 

Faith Myhra, Protect Playa Now Organizing Member said, “Throughout this frustrating and clearly illegitimate Phase One process, SoCalGas has repeatedly failed to meet requirements of the CPUC’s decision on the project and the Environmental & Social Justice Action Plan. When confronted with these failures, SoCalGas has offered a few platitudes, buried concerns in lengthy reports, and refused to address issues in any genuine or actionable way. This is especially troubling given that many of these concerns are about safety—and SoCalGas already has a terrible safety record across Los Angeles. Instead of using the process to address the safety concerns of communities, they’ve used it to practice obfuscation, and denial, while rushing forward. We are leaving the process because we cannot offer our passive approval of it. The CPUC must reject Phase Two.”

“We strongly urge the CPUC to deny SoCalGas’s request to move forward to Phase 2 and to deny any further funding for a process conducted in bad faith,” the letter concludes.”

Alex Jasset, Energy Justice Director with Physicians for Social Responsibility – LA said, “A project as massive and complicated as this one deserves serious and thoughtful study and community engagement to ensure that communities are not negatively impacted. Unfortunately, SoCalGas has rushed this process to fit their own timeline, ignoring critical questions from the stakeholder group about cost, safety, health impacts, and water concerns.  We cannot in good conscience continue with a process that ignores the valuable input of frontline communities and longstanding local organizations, especially when the stakes are so high.  We urge the CPUC to reject Phase II of this project and to withhold further funding for this wasteful and unserious stakeholder process.”

Despite hopes that the Angeles Link Project will provide a much needed clean source of energy, hydrogen is too water intensive to be a viable climate solution, especially in a state like California that is already experiencing historic mega-droughts and wildfires. Further, hydrogen produces noxious pollutants at rates even higher than natural gas. Ultimately, this Project will only entrench the fossil fuel industry and perpetuate the harm already being done to communities experiencing the brunt of the effects of climate change and pollution.