Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) today announced new assistance to approximately 135 households affected by worsening land movement in the Portuguese Bend Community in Rancho Palos Verdes. 

SoCalGas will provide each impacted account holder with $2,500 to help residents who do not have natural gas service due to the land movement.

“We know this is difficult for the community, especially given the current uncertainty about future natural gas service and the continued land movement,” said SoCalGas Senior Vice President and Chief Infrastructure Officer, Rodger Schwecke. “We want to help our customers meet some of their immediate needs, whether that’s laundry or meals, or to help residents with longer term appliance choices.”

SoCalGas technical and operating personnel, along with third-party experts, have been closely monitoring land movement in the Portuguese Bend and other communities for several months. During that time, SoCalGas has worked diligently to continue safely serving the Portuguese Bend community. These efforts included: 

• Relocating more than 600 feet of pipeline due to significant land movement.
• Installing a new isolation valve to quickly shut off the community in the event of an emergency and new, innovative flexible pipeline joints that can accommodate some land movement.
• Accelerated leak inspections intervals throughout the neighborhood.
• Closely coordinating with first responders, city officials and third-party experts to keep the public informed and to support infrastructure enhancements.

Unfortunately, the neighborhood continues to experience significant new land movement damaging roads, homes and further threatening the safety of SoCalGas’ infrastructure. 

Due to the significant strain on SoCalGas’ infrastructure caused by recent land movement, natural gas service to 135 homes is being turned off in the Portuguese Bend community on July 29, 2024. 

SoCalGas will coordinate with the Portuguese Bend Homeowners Association to promptly deliver the assistance to customers. 

For more information visit socalgas.com/rpv. 

About SoCalGas    

Headquartered in Los Angeles, SoCalGas is the largest gas distribution utility in the United States. SoCalGas aims to deliver affordable, reliable, and increasingly renewable gas service to approximately 21 million consumers across approximately 24,000 square miles of Central and Southern California. We believe gas delivered through our pipelines plays a key role in California's clean energy transition by supporting energy system reliability and resiliency and enabling integration of renewable resources.   SoCalGas' mission is to build the cleanest, safest and most innovative energy infrastructure company in America. In support of that mission, SoCalGas aspires to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in its operations and delivery of energy by 2045 and to replace 20 percent of its traditional natural gas supply to core customers with renewable natural gas (RNG) by 2030. RNG can be made from waste created by landfills and wastewater treatment plants. SoCalGas is also investing in its gas delivery infrastructure while working to keep bills affordable for customers. SoCalGas is a subsidiary of Sempra (NYSE: SRE), an energy infrastructure company based in San Diego.   For more information visit socalgas.com/newsroom or connect with SoCalGas on X (formerly Twitter) (@SoCalGas), Instagram (@SoCalGas) and Facebook.     

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