For over two months a leaking storage well has poured out millions of pounds of methane gas into the atmosphere near the Porter Ranch section of Los Angeles. The Aliso Canyon leak is the largest known source of methane emissions in California.

Over 1.6 million pounds of methane has been released by the leak each day, this is equivalent to driving 4.5 million cars in one day.

Methane is the main component of natural gas, and 84 percent more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Countries such as Bhutahn, and China are trying to cut down on emission, but gas flaring and leaks are still great problems. Tracking a methane leak is difficult to track, with the fact that methane is invisible and odorless. Ways to find the leak is by using infrared cameras and chemicals that replace the odorless smell with a bad odor. Over 83 thousand metric tons of methane has leaked to this day

Over 2,800 families from the Porter Ranch community in Los Angeles were forced to leave their homes to escape the adverse effects from the odorless gas. The side effects of high concentration methane in the air lead to headaches and nosebleeds. Over 660 people in porter ranch filed a complaint over the terrible smell and the side effects. Despite the large amount of complaints nobody took action towards the complaints.

“Property values have been enormously impacted. Small businesses have been impacted, and the question is whether or not they’ll even survive. We’re hopeful this leak gets fixed in the next month and a half. But we’re not confident.” says Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council president Paula Cracium.

With today’s technology and using high tech cameras and satellites workers are able to capture the releases from the methane with no problem. This helps to put more pressure on the companies and start to take action sooner to stop the leak.

“It’s pretty alarming when you see that much is just dumping into our air,” mentioned Sharon Wilson of the nonprofit EarthWorks, which took aerial pictures of the leak at the SoCal Gas site.

The causes from flaring has a lower impact on the climate than a vent which would go directly into the atmosphere. Places in where methane is located are starting to scatter all over the glove and is slowly starting to add a large sum to its greenhouse gas pollution.

Overall there is no quick solution with solving this problem, and it will take months to dig down deep enough to find the leak and to cover it.