The Texas Railroad Commission is tasked with plugging wells. But the state regulators say their scope is limited.
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Image: Bill Wight looks at the well that leaked enormous volumes of saltwater on his property. It took crews over a month to seal the well and stop the leak. Credit: Sarah M. Vasquez for The Texas Tribune
From the article:
Mounds of dirt towered over Bill Wight, who stared helplessly at the piles that had once been pasture for his cattle.
After a few moments, he turned his head and surveyed a vast pool of water that had spilled over his land after an abandoned well exploded in early December. The water that sprang from the forgotten hole drilled searching for oil or water contained so much salt that it scrubbed the life off the land. It decimated the soil.
A rancher who spent a decade tending to the sprawls of this West Texas ranch, Wight was suddenly a stranger in his own land.
“Nobody really knows what you’re supposed to do about something like this,” Wight said in January.
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