SAN ANTONIO, Texas—In Texas, suburbs have sprung up where oil pump jacks once bobbed.
At the Preserve at Medina, a subdivision of brick-and-siding starter homes in southwest San Antonio, students filed off a school bus on a hot afternoon. One child turned down Vesper Branch, a street with a plugged oil well ringed by a heavy black metal fence:
A faint smell of rotten eggs hung in the air, from low levels of hydrogen sulfide leaking from the well. Only the fence separated the child from the leaking well.
We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every day or once a week, our original stories and digest of the web’s top headlines deliver the full story, for free.
Our #1 newsletter delivers the week’s climate and energy news – our original stories and top headlines from around the web.
Dan Gearino’s habit-forming weekly take on how to understand the energy transformation reshaping our world.
Don’t miss a beat. Get a daily email of our original, groundbreaking stories written by our national network of award-winning reporters.
A digest of stories on the inequalities that worsen the impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities.
Oil hasn’t flowed from the Thompson Callaway Spears #1 well since it was plugged in 2006. But in recent years, the well has vexed Texas regulators and nearby residents. The state has replugged it five times, yet gas continues to leak. Since a housing subdivision rose around the well in the early 2020s, residents have filed repeated complaints.
Source link
