In the Porter Ranch community north of Los Angeles there was a mix of relief and frustration last week as Southern California Gas Co. said a natural gas leak that had forced more than 6,000 people from their homes was finally stopped. Residents blamed the leak, which had spilled methane into the air for four months, for nosebleeds, headaches, nausea and other ailments.

Wells at the gas storage facility will undergo strict inspections. California lawmakers want new regulations for gas and oil storage facilities and stricter inspections for below-ground safety valves that could prevent something like this from happening again.

In the media, the Porter Ranch leak was overshadowed by the lead contamination of the drinking water in Flint, Mich. Still, the gas leak in California resembles Flint in many ways.

The residents of the area feel betrayed. The gas leak was not quickly discovered and the public was not alerted for some time after an injection line 500 feet below the surface ruptured. Then, despite residents complaints, company officials were slow to respond. Infrared images of the gas clouds shown on television got the public’s attention and put pressure on the company.

Residents say they have little trust in authorities who now say it’s safe to return to their homes. It’s the same in Flint, where people say they will wonder and worry every time they turn on a faucet.

Without the infrared images, Porter Ranch looked like a normal suburban California landscape. Unlike the black oil oozing from the seafloor in the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the natural gas leak could not be seen by the naked eye. The BP spill featured daily television images of oil leaking underwater, aerial images of shiny oil slicks and tar balls on beaches.

The Porter Ranch gas leak produced none of those images, yet it’s considered the worst environmental disaster since the Deep Water Horizon spill. The Porter Ranch leak released an estimated 100,000 tons of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas considered far more damaging than carbon dioxide.

While the drinking water disaster in Flint has political and economic ingredients, it also is a reminder of the risks of aging and out-of-date infrastructure. In many older cities in the United States, old pipes can leach lead if water chemistry changes. In many older cities in America, aging and corroded waterlines are not the only danger lurking underground — cast iron gas lines have leaked and caused deadly fires and explosions.

Because they are under ground, old gas or water pipelines do not get much public attention, until something bad happens. And in today’s political climate, where normally bipartisan support for infrastructure spending to repair and maintain roads and bridges cannot get through Congress, there is little hope water and gas lines will be replaced — that is, until people are poisoned, water turns brown or cast iron gas lines break and cause explosions.

More than anything, the Porter Ranch leak reminds us of the damaging effects of methane gas. Because of the environmental harm methane can cause, the natural gas industry risks losing its “clean energy” image. Backers of coal point out that while gas is cleaner when burned, the small but widespread methane leaks mean it’s not really cleaner than coal.

Porter Ranch is a high-profile leak. But most experts believe that ongoing methane releases happening across the country at well pads, on gas lines and at processing plants far exceed the Porter Ranch leak.

Especially in California, the gas leak was big news for month. Public perception of the gas industry’s clean-energy advantage over coal is jeopardized if there isn’t action taken to crack down on methane leaks across the entire production system. Either the industry should do it, or federal regulations should force action.

Images of the BP oil spill made the environmental damage real to millions of Americans. The political heat rightfully generated by the Flint drinking water crisis is a reminder of the vulnerability of municipal water systems. And the Porter Ranch methane leak exposed the gas industry’s quiet crisis of system-wide methane leaks belying it’s clean energy image.