Los Angeles hid a methane leak for a year. Activists want the power plant shut down

Andres Ramirez doesn’t know who scrawled the words “SHUT DOWN THE PLANT” across a cinder-block wall outside Valley Generating Station, where red and white smokestacks tower over the northeast corner of the San Fernando Valley.

But in a neighborhood burdened by dozens of landfills, recycling centers, junkyards, trucking companies and other noisy and polluting industrial facilities — and bisected by three major freeways — the graffiti artist could have been almost anyone.