Once it has been certified that the leak is permanently plugged, residents will have eight days to move back to their homes, as laid out in an agreement between the company and the Los Angeles city attorney’s office. After the agreed-upon time has passed, SoCalGas will stop paying for residents’ relocation costs. The five-member board of the Los Angeles County commissioners has passed a resolution asking the company to make the return-home timeline 30 days instead of eight.

But just getting the well plugged and people back into their homes is only part of what dealing with this disaster should entail.

The well that leaked—designated SS25—is one of 115 in the Aliso Canyon storage facility, which has a capacity of 86 billion cubic feet of natural gas, the second largest such facility nationwide, and one of 14 in California. There are at least 415 of these facilities nationwide.

Many of the wells at Aliso Canyon, the majority of which—like SS25—are more than half a century old, some of them more than 70 years old, are corroded or mechanically unsound, SoCalGasCo has admitted. SS25 did not have a safety valve that might have prevented the leak from occurring in the first place. A broken valve was removed in 1979 but not replaced. The rules only require safety valves for wells within 100 feet of a road or 300 feet of a residence.

After Gov. Jerry Brown finally got around to declaring a state of emergency because of the massive leak, emergency regulations were imposed by California's Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources for all of the state’s natural gas storage facilities. These include more and regular inspections and mandate that risk management plans be developed. But, as reporters Ferner and O’Connor note, the critics say these emergency rules don’t go far enough.

Part of the reason for that may be the fact that the oil and gas industry spent $22 million on lobbying California lawmakers in 2015. Half of that came from the Western States Petroleum Association, which made it the biggest single lobbying spender in the state for the fourth year in a row.

Although the Aliso Canyon leak was massive, constituting at its peak about 25 percent of California’s total methane emissions, there are worse examples. But they aren’t point-source leaks. Jonathan Thompson at the Colorado-based High Country News reported last month:

But add up all the oil- and gas-related methane point sources in one hydrocarbon-producing basin and the story changes. San Juan Basin oil and gas facilities emitted 291,162 metric tons of methane during 2014, according to the EPA inventory. But the inventory doesn’t account for smaller producers, geologic seeps that have been exacerbated by oil and gas development, abandoned wells or undetected leaks. So actual emissions from oil and gas facilities far exceed the EPA’s greenhouse gas inventory, as numerous studies have shown. Take all that into account, and the San Juan Basin’s total oil and gas emissions rate is probably closer to 500,000 metric tons per year, or 1,400 tons per day, a far higher rate than at Aliso Canyon. [...] Major incidents, at least ones that directly impact nearby populations, at underground storage facilities have been few and far between. When they do happen, though, they tend to be spectacular. In 2004, ignited gas spewing from a failed valve in Moss Bluff, Texas, created a 1,000-foot column of flames, and in 2001, explosions resulting from gas migrating from an underground storage reservoir in Kansas killed two. Surely many more climate-damaging methane leaks go unnoticed.

As Thompson notes, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regulates natural gas storage units used for interstate commerce, but only on rates and storage levels, leaving safety regulations to the states. And even in California, which generally has tougher environmental regulations than other states, the rules governing oil and gas operations are inadequate. Decide for yourself whether you think that has anything to do with those millions of dollars the industry pours into nudging and cajoling and pushing the states’ lawmakers.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules on the oil and gas industry introduced in August don’t apply to underground storage facilities. A pipeline safety bill—S. 2226—which was introduced in November, would set safety standards for all underground storage. But the bill has just three co-sponsors and a slim chance of passage.

Another bill, introduced February 2—H.R. 4429—would authorize the secretary of Transportation to set standards for underground natural gas storage facilities. That bill has zero co-sponsors.

Other proposals, which would cover more than pipelines or storage facilities have also been made. In 2014, for instance, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) introduced the 2014 Super Pollutants Act—S. 2911. It would, among other things, set up a new task force to reduce short-lived climate pollutants, like methane. The gas is called a super pollutant because, over a 20-year period, it is 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. The bill has 11 co-sponsors, but no hearings have yet been held since it was introduced 18 months ago, and it’s unlikely that any will be.