This article originally appeared on October 18 at Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. This story was a collaboration between Inside Climate News and the San Antonio Express-News.

SAN ANTONIO—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: 

“CAUTION flammable gas,” a sign on the fence warned.  

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. 

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.

Soil and air monitoring near the well has detected leaking methane and hydrogen sulfide. In June, contractors told the Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas industry overseer, that plumes of methane gas were moving through the soil toward homes in the subdivision, which could trigger an explosion.

“We had no idea when we moved here,” said Krystal Solis, who lives across the street with her husband and three children. “No one told us anything.”

The TCEQ central headquarters in Austin (Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News)

Plugged wells are usually safe, but several in Texas have failed catastrophically in recent years, including at a Baptist church in the Permian Basin town of Grandfalls. From Canada to Southern California, legacy oil and gas wells have been linked to leaks, fires and explosions in residential areas.

Prospective homebuyers rarely know about old oil and gas wells before they buy property. Texas has no statewide laws regulating construction around plugged oil and gas wells. Real estate developers are not required to disclose legacy wells to potential buyers. This means that many people unknowingly end up living near plugged or orphan wells that could present future liabilities. 

Laura Lopez, a spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which regulates air pollution, said the hydrogen sulfide levels detected at the well could cause odors and trigger adverse health effects including headaches and nausea. 

Developers of the Preserve at Medina and home builders D.R. Horton and LGI Homes did not respond to requests for comment.

“The well will be re-plugged using a different strategy and materials,” said Bryce Dubee, spokesman for the Railroad Commission, which has plugged the well five times. “This proposed operation is currently under review.”

Dubee said the RRC has conducted joint inspections with the TCEQ and county emergency personnel, which confirmed gas was emanating from the well. 

“Both the RRC and TCEQ are now conducting regular monitoring of the area,” he said.

Old Oilfields Cause Fresh Problems

The Austin Chalk formation, from which the limestone walls of the Alamo were quarried, also produces oil and gas. A company called J.D. Collins drilled the Thompson Callaway Spears #1 well in 1955 on what was then the rural edge of San Antonio. 

As the decades passed, the well changed hands many times. By the turn of the century, it was producing little oil. Rainer Energy sold the lease to Arben Oil, which sold it to Black Jack Services. February 2004 was the last month the company reported oil flowing at the well. 

Black Jack Services plugged the well in 2006.

That same year, Toyota opened a manufacturing plant on San Antonio’s South Side, and development slowly encroached on the rural area along the Medina River. The well was forgotten until 2019, as construction began on the Preserve at Medina.

Developers discovered gas leaking at the site in 2019, according to a Railroad Commission document. In April 2019, commission inspectors confirmed hydrogen sulfide and methane were coming out of the ground near the well. The agency replugged the well later that year. By then the former operator, Black Jack Services, was in delinquent status with the Railroad Commission, so the state assumed the costs. 

A staffer wrote in a subsequent report that the fix “seemed to have worked this time around.”

But the problems were only beginning.

The subdivision’s location among plugged oil wells—there are at least three more in the Preserve at Medina —is not unique. From Pittsburgh to Midland to Los Angeles, many residential developments are dotted with old wells.

“Unfortunately, people are buying property, including homes, and have no idea that it could have been built on top of a plugged well,” said Blake Scott, who through his Texas-based company Waste Analytics provides information about legacy oil and gas activities to people buying property. 

Both plugged and unplugged wells have caused problems. On Aug. 26, 2021, an explosion ripped through downtown Wheatley, Ontario, Canada, injuring 20 people. Hydrogen sulfide had migrated from a nearby legacy gas well into a downtown basement, triggering the explosion.

In 2007, in Trinidad, Colo., a house under construction blew up, sending a worker into cardiac arrest. Regulators said methane from an abandoned gas well under the house caused the explosion.

In Newport Beach, Calif., several homes were evacuated in October 2025 following a methane leak from a 1920s-era oil well.

Earlier this year, a plugged well failed in the parking lot of the Baptist church in Grandfalls. The property was flooded with toxic wastewater.

“Plugged well failures seem to be rare,” said Adam Peltz, senior director and lead counsel at the Environmental Defense Fund. “But we also don’t know how often it happens.”

“If I had a message for homebuyers, it would be to do your own due diligence,” he said. “This is happening all over the country.”

Julie Range, policy manager for the Texas-based nonprofit Commission Shift, a watchdog that tracks the Railroad Commission, said disclosure of prior oil and gas activities should be required to protect home buyers. 

“Requiring disclosure of past oil and gas activity and building setback standards from old wells may just save a family heartache,” she said. “Unfortunately, our lack of historic disclosure requirements by regulators make it more difficult for new owners to know the risks lurking on their property.”

Plugging Costs and Complaints Rack Up

At the Preserve at Medina, construction continued after the well was replugged in 2019. Three- and four-bedroom houses began to fill streets with names such as Mint Patch and Mistyrock.

 In 2021, Railroad Commission inspectors returned and found the well was still leaking.

Contractors plugged it again in January 2022. An inspector wrote that during the plugging a welder found a flammable methane leak and refused to continue working.

The well was replugged once more that August.

People had started to move into the surrounding homes. The developers had left the plot where the well was located unoccupied. According to appraisal district records, the Preserve at Medina River Association Inc. owns the plot.

The well was plugged again—for the fifth time—in May 2023.

But complaints kept coming in. 

Amanda and Anthony Pacheco were among the first to move into the neighborhood, arriving in July 2021 with their two daughters, now 12 and 14. As first-time homeowners from San Antonio, they were drawn by the rural atmosphere.

“When we qualified, we were so excited,” Amanda Pacheco said. “Little did we know what was happening.”

She said some days it “reeks” at her home, which is down the street from the well. She worries that someone lighting a cigarette could accidentally start a fire at the well. When it was re-plugged in 2024, vibrations from drilling equipment shook her house. She said cracks have formed in the concrete foundation.

Pacheco said they would have never bought the home if they had known about the problems with the well nearby. Nothing required the developers to disclose to potential buyers the locations of plugged wells in the subdivision, under state or local law.

Krystal Solis moved to the Preserve at Medina with her husband and three teenage children in September 2023. Their house sits downwind and less than 60 feet from the well. 

She started getting headaches from the fumes in 2024. She noticed that liquid would bubble up around the well after it rained and stain the pavement orange.

Neither her home owners association nor the local utility could answer her questions. It wasn’t until a Railroad Commission vehicle parked nearby that she learned who was responsible for the well. 

“This well reared its ugly head again, and we’re reaching out to other contractors to help us in re-plugging the well,” Travis Baer, the Railroad Commission’s San Antonio district director, emailed colleagues in October 2024.

Another plugging job—the sixth—was completed that November.

By this time the Railroad Commission had spent more than $1 million on the repeated plugging operations.

(Texas Observer staff)

The Railroad Commission is responsible for plugging oil and gas wells. TCEQ has jurisdiction over air pollution affecting public health, including the methane and hydrogen sulfide leaking from the well. TCEQ received complaints both before and after the 2024 plugging.

In October 2025, a TCEQ representative emailed Baer to ask whether the well would be plugged again.

“We are performing additional monitoring and data analysis of the geology and gas for the time being,” Baer replied. “I’ll let y’all know when a permanent solution is decided on.”

The Railroad Commission put up a permanent, black metal fence around the plot and a sign warning passersby of flammable gas in 2025.

Solis said that the sign and fence were an improvement. But it didn’t relieve her concerns. She said that on New Year’s Eve 2026 a firework set off in the neighborhood briefly set the well on fire.

Solis said regulators have never given her a clear answer as to whether her family is at risk.

“I just want to know if it’s dangerous,” she said.

Few Limits on Construction Near Old Wells

Blake Scott of Waste Analytics says that neither the oil and gas nor real estate industries have an incentive to disclose the location of old wells to homeowners.

“It’s tragic to me that they are knowingly building developments on top of this stuff,” he said. “And they don’t feel compelled to say anything about it.”

Since the oil industry in Texas began in the 1800s, hundreds of thousands of wells have been drilled around the state. Many were abandoned by their operators without being plugged. Others were plugged but with subpar practices compared to modern industry standards. 

This complicates efforts to locate old wells. Locations on the Railroad Commission GIS map for wells are often inaccurate. The GIS map shows the Thompson Callaway Spears #1 well 110 feet northeast of its actual location, according to an analysis by oilfield surveyor Jackie Portsmouth of G-Forensic, which investigates old oil wells for property owners.

Often there is no indication at the surface that a plugged well lies underground. Inside Climate News visited the locations of other plugged wells at Preserve at Medina and could not find any surface markers. 

Scott said that, to his knowledge, New Mexico is the only state that bans building on top of plugged wells. The state prohibits permanent structures on plugged wells without written approval from the state regulator.

Texas counties lack legal authority to adopt building codes of this nature. Texas cities are limited in their ability to regulate oil and gas activities after the passage of HB 40 in 2015. The law prohibits municipalities from regulating oil and gas activities, except for “commercially reasonable” regulations related to surface-level activities. 

Nonetheless, several Texas cities have restrictions on building near plugged wells. Fort Worth prohibits construction on top of, or within five feet of, an abandoned gas well. Midland city code says that structures shall not be built on top of abandoned wells. 

The City of San Antonio does not have any ordinances related to plugged wells. The city referred questions to the Railroad Commission. Bexar County officials declined to comment. 

Gas Exposure and Unanswered Questions

TCEQ and Railroad Commission monitoring has detected hydrogen sulfide, volatile organic compounds, and methane leaking at the Thompson Callaway Spears #1 wellhead and from the soil nearby. The flammable gas emitted from the wellhead is above the Lower Explosion Limit, indicating the gas could combust.

The TCEQ spokesperson said that during the agency’s investigations in 2023 and 2025, the levels of volatile organic compounds in the air were detected below levels that would cause concern for short-term health and welfare. She acknowledged that the odors from hydrogen sulfide could cause “indirect” health effects. 

The Railroad Commission spokesperson said its investigation found evidence that gas is migrating along the outside of the well to the surface. 

James Tim Doty, president of TCDH Consulting and former mobile monitoring team leader at the TCEQ, visited the Preserve at Medina in late September. Using an optical gas imaging camera, he documented hydrocarbon emissions from the wellhead and the ground nearby. Doty, who spent 28 years at TCEQ, said a “substantial” amount of gas was leaking, which could present a safety risk.

Gunnar Schade, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University who reviewed some of the monitoring data, said that high concentrations of gas next to the wellhead are a cause for concern.

“Nobody should be very close to the wellhead for more than a few minutes without protective breathing equipment,” he wrote in an email.

Perhaps the most concerning observations have been made underground. The engineering firm Kleinfelder, contracted by the Railroad Commission, wrote in a June 2026 email to agency staff that two plumes of methane gas in the soil are migrating toward houses. The email warned that heating, ventilation or air conditioning equipment could be drawing the methane toward the homes.

“If enough methane is pulled into a home, there is a risk of fire or explosion to the home,” the project manager wrote.

“This is a preliminary investigative report, and the matter is still under evaluation,” RRC spokesman Dubee said. “No matter how small the risk, the RRC is committed to protecting public safety and Texas communities.” 

Railroad Commission inspectors returned to the well on Oct. 7 in preparation to plug it again. 

Solis and Pacheco were not aware there was methane in the soil. Solis is still hoping for answers from regulators after two years of gas fumes and frequent headaches.

“If it’s dangerous, we’re going to pack up and move,” she said.

The post Abandoned Oil Well Spreads Toxic Fumes, Dread Across San Antonio Subdivision appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The post Highways and Hunting, Parasites and Panopticons appeared first on The Texas Observer.

From 2020 to 2025, the number of confirmed overdose deaths in Texas prisons rose from just four to at least 131. Despite this surge in fatalities, however, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) did not request any additional funding to expand its drug rehabilitation programs in its recent proposed budget to the Texas Legislature ahead of next year’s session. 

Instead, the agency asked lawmakers to “maintain current funding levels for rehabilitation and reentry programs such as chaplaincy, reentry transitional coordinators, substance use treatment programs, and the sex offender treatment program” for 2028-29. If that request is granted, funding for these programs would in fact effectively decline due to rising inflation. Further, the same programming is set to be affected by a mandated 3 percent reduction in spending across state departments, though TDCJ has asked for that cut to be reversed.

This appropriations request comes after contraband—which includes drugs—entering prisons topped the list of priorities for the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice to address in 2027 and after the Texas Observer published an investigative series showing the consequences of punishing drug possession without robustly funding treatment for incarcerated Texans.

In the request, prison officials did ask for millions of dollars in additional funding for new interdiction efforts—including drone detection technology and more drug-sniffing dogs—as part of a “multi-faceted approach by the agency to combat the introduction of narcotics and other dangerous materials to agency facilities,” as the agency wrote.

This follows a longstanding pattern. Funding for agency-led rehabilitation programs—which include mandatory classes for parole and specialized substance-abuse facilities—has not kept pace with inflation in the past decade, and TDCJ hasn’t asked lawmakers for the money to significantly expand these programs, even as need grows and the agency says it is trying to offer programming to more prisoners. (The agency has said it’s ramping up peer-led programs and online resources including a help line and educational videos.) Meanwhile, prisoners are racking up new criminal charges for using or dealing, which is having little apparent effect on the prevalence of drugs inside prisons. The agency is doubling down on punitive efforts, which sometimes include highly publicized inter-agency busts of smuggling rings involving both prisoners and prison staff.

“Funding drug interdiction alone is a misguided approach,” Senator Borris Miles told the Observer in October. “The state must also address the ongoing problem of addiction in our prison system through treatment and rehabilitation, in addition to prevention.”

Republican Committee Chair Pete Flores previously told the Observer he “support[s] both initiatives [punishment and treatment] and additional funding that will eliminate contraband in our prisons.” Flores did not reply to a request for comment on the agency’s appropriations request.

Pete Flores on the Senate floor in May 2025 (Jordan Vonderhaar for the Texas Observer)

In response to the Observer’s questions, TDCJ spokesperson Hannah Haney said the budget request “does reflect meaningful investments in rehabilitation,” saying funds were “redistributed to expand substance-use education” and other programs. When asked where this redistribution was represented in the budget, Haney did not respond.

As part of the request that the 3 percent across-the-board reduction be reversed, agency officials did warn in their budget proposal that reducing the allotment for salaries and wages would affect the programs prisons can provide.

“The cumulative effect of potential budget reductions eliminating or reducing educational, treatment, and other inmate-related activities would also impact security negatively by increasing idleness and decreasing opportunities for self-improvement,” the proposal reads.

The agency’s interdiction-related request includes about $40 million for drone technology and “contraband detection equipment”—including mail scanners, metal detectors, and chemical tests—as well as more employees for its contraband monitoring teams. 

The investment in drone detection technology comes as the number of drone smuggling attempts detected by TDCJ has risen sharply in recent years—more than two dozen in 2025 compared to just three in 2023—but the aerial route still accounts for only a small fraction of drug smuggling.

Drugs are also brought in by visitors, occasionally ferried through the mail, and sometimes even tossed over prison yard fences at night. And a major source of the drug flow is TDCJ employees themselves: In the past six years, at least 220 TDCJ employees have been charged with contraband-related crimes like drug possession and engaging in organized criminal activity, the Observer previously found. Staffing woes have long plagued the agency, which has reported higher staffing levels in the past year following multiple years of Lege-approved pay bumps for employees.

Meanwhile, advocates outside fear the rising death toll in Texas prisons is a problem TDCJ’s current rehabilitation programs are ill-equipped to handle, stressing the importance of educating people on the dangers of the drugs that are inevitably making their way inside. 

“We talk to people inside who are scared to help each other for fear of lockdown; the education on what is actually poisoning people is more important than the classes for people who survive,” said Maggie Luna, executive director of the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance, a nonprofit that provides direct services to people with addiction. “People are dying, and it is all preventable.”

The post Despite Surge in Prison Overdoses, State Agency Requests No New Treatment Funding appeared first on The Texas Observer.