In 2021, the Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) was approved to remove contaminated soil from the Ventura Compressor Station site without an environmental review. This process involves public comment, which is required to ensure compliance with laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Because of this, residents began raising concerns about the facility’s environmental impact, which compresses natural gas and ensures a reliable supply for customers along the Central Coast.
The Ventura Compressor Station, located at 1555 N. Olive Street on Ventura’s West End, sits near residential neighborhoods, the West Ventura Boys & Girls Club and E.P. Foster Elementary School, placing sensitive populations close to an industrial facility that compresses and distributes natural gas along California’s Central Coast.
In Dec. 2020, a soil report was conducted on the Ventura Compressor Station site. The soil was found to contain petroleum hydrocarbons, lead, arsenic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), pollutants linked to historic operations when the property functioned as a manufactured gas plant decades before SoCalGas took ownership.
Concerns intensified in 2023, when the Ventura Compressor Station Remediation Project, a soil excavation conducted between May and August, revealed contamination far more extensive than originally anticipated. According to the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the cleanup was initially projected to remove approximately 2,500 tons of polluted soil. Instead, workers ultimately excavated about 17,500 tons, seven times the expected amount.
DTSC stated that while the cleanup method for the site’s soil did not change, the significantly larger volume of contaminated soil prompted the agency to notify the public and open a formal comment period.
Climate First: Replacing Oil and Gas (CFROG) has assisted with community organization and concerns about the health impacts of the contamination and emissions of the site.
“Any sort of natural gas and natural gas infrastructure is a huge source of methane emissions… and really is pushing forward the climate crisis. But in addition to that […] the impacts to people that live nearby, methane is often associated with co-pollutants that are also being released during that time […] Headaches, nosebleeds, all of these health impacts […] The co-pollutants that are being emitted from this facility every day in smaller levels can cause serious health issues,” Haley Ehlers, a representative from CFROG, said.
However, SoCalGas maintains that the soil cleanup was necessary to safely prepare the site for future construction and maintenance, such as the company’s proposed modernization project. The Ventura Compressor Modernization Project is a plan to replace and modernize the existing gas compressor station in Ventura. It aims to replace three old, gas-powered compressors located in separate areas with a new hybrid system consisting of four compressors, two powered by natural gas and two by electricity. This upgrade results from community feedback on the original plan of four new natural gas compressors and is intended to reduce nitrogen oxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.
“[T]he goal is to be reliable, to keep the gas flowing reliably to homes and businesses and farms in Ventura and along the coast […] So if we get approval, once it’s constructed and completed and operational, it is expected to cut certain pollutants like NOx [nitrous oxides] by nearly 75% compared to the current facility,” Ahmad Solomon, a representative for SoCalGas said.
Members of the public expressed concerns about the Ventura Compressor project with the formation of the Westside Clean Air Coalition, and the organization of events such as a community march in April 2021.
“[A]t the end of 2020, going into 2021, some community members that live nearby the site received notices in the mail that the [DTSC] was going to do soil remediation at this site near their home … a lot of community members and … parents that have kids that go to the school right across the street became aware that that site was a fossil fuel site and that there was toxic soil there or that there was any sort of threat of pollution coming from that site,” Ehlers said.
Beginning in 2021, SoCalGas opened the project for community comment, a period that lasted until April 2025. Community members began proposing alternative project locations and equipment beginning in late 2021. The Avocado Site is a community-suggested location roughly 3000 feet away from the current site, and is located on the existing transmission pipeline corridor. The Devil’s Canyon community-suggested site is about 5000 feet from the current site and is not located on the existing transmission pipeline corridor. The Ventura Steel site, identified by SoCalGas, is 7000 feet from the current site and is also not located on the existing transmission pipeline corridor.
SoCalGas is attempting to strengthen communication with the local community, including their notification process with residents, as the project continues and public comment is taken into account.
“We’re trying to build a relationship. Because of a lack of communication in the past, there’s been some challenges in the community, so we’re trying to improve upon that… we can try to address any questions or concerns through the normal channels without alert[s] causing panic or alarm,” Solomon said.
As the environmental and public health implications of the Ventura Compressor Station continue to be evaluated, tensions remain between SoCalGas’s stated goals of modernization and community concerns. With formal review processes underway, the future of the Ventura Compressor Station will likely depend on how regulators balance infrastructure needs with environmental protection and the surrounding community’s voices.
