This article is a collaboration between the San Antonio Express-News, El Pais, and Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual nonprofit newsroom and funder dedicated to high-quality, fact-based news and information from the U.S.-Mexico border.

EDINBURG — South Texas voters who embraced Don Trump two years ago have largely soured on the two-term president, and many of them are now smiling on a Tejano music star who’s running for Congress as a Democrat, according to a new poll.

Less than two weeks before a pivotal midterm election, Bobby Pulido appears poised to flip the 15th Congressional District seat in this heavily Latino district where Trump dominated in 2024.

The poll — commissioned by the San Antonio Express-News, El Pais and the nonprofit Puente News Collaborative — found that likely voters favor Pulido 51% to 44% over Republican Congresswoman Monica De La  Cruz.

Pulido with student musicians (Michael Gonzalez for Puente News Collaborative)

Among Latino likely voters, the gap widens, with about 57% for Pulido, compared with 40% for De La Cruz. The Latino population accounts for about 82% of 15th District residents and 65% of its likely voters. 

Pulido is also pulling ahead among independents, 55% to 33%.

The poll, conducted in Spanish and English, was carried out Oct. 13-16 by Texas Southern University’s Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center. The survey has a margin of error of 3.8%, with 5% of voters still undecided.

The Cook Political Report rates the 15th District race in the Rio Grande Valley as a toss-up. 

“If the economy was booming then Republicans would be doing much better in South Texas,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University and co-director of the poll. “But the economy is not booming.”

Moreover, Jones added, the 15th’s new district map, part of the president’s gerrymandering plan to add more Republicans in the House of Representatives, may not be working out as envisioned.

“The false assumption that Republicans made was that Latinos would vote the same way they voted for Trump in 2024, but that was very unrealistic — Latinos remain a swing vote,” Jones said. “Trump is underwater in the Valley, by 10 points. His bubble is bursting.”

Among the poll’s key findings:

52% of likely voters in the 15th District report being worse off economically than a year ago, while 21% report being better off and 27% report being about the same.

57% of likely voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. Just 37% approved.

51% of likely voters disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration and border security, while 47% approved.

Separately, in the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races — and among the district’s likely voters — Gov. Greg Abbott leads Democrat Gina Hinojosa 49% to 46% and Democrat James Talarico is favored over Republican Ken Paxton 48% to 46%, according to a poll by the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs.

If Pulido wins, he will have surfed a wave-like, nationwide retreat of the Latino vote from Trump and the Republican Party, analysts say. That swing has upended Republican plans and underscored the growing importance of the fickle — or persuadable — Mexican American voter.

Many of these voters don’t have strong ties to either major party.

Accordingly, Pulido has been running less as a Democrat and more on his personal popularity and a rejection of Trump, who won the district by 18 percentage points in 2024. 

“I’m not going to Washington to serve a political party. I’m going to serve you,” the two-time Latin Grammy Award winner told some 9,000 rambunctious fans at an Oct. 17 concert in his hometown of Edinburg, which he said was the last one of his 31-year music career. “I made music for me. I’m running for Congress for you.”

Much of Trump’s appeal two years ago may have been in his vows to fix what many here and nationwide saw as a broken border. This year, with undocumented border crossings reduced to a trickle, voters’ focus appears to have shifted from border security to the high cost of gas and groceries, according to the El Pais-Express News-Puente News poll.

The fear factor — a sense of chaos and conflict at the border — isn’t dominating the election cycle. Instead, ICE raids are increasingly seen as a drag on the economy, Jones said, pointing to the construction and trade sectors.

“A lot of industries that depend on undocumented immigrants have simply stopped functioning,” Jones said. “Houses aren’t being built, and therefore construction supplies aren’t being purchased.”

‘Promises turned out to be lies’

Pulido is hugely popular across South Texas. Nearly everyone seems to have a personal connection with the singer or claims to. That’s why he’s largely built his campaign around singing at dozens of quinceñeras — coming-out parties for 15-year-old girls that are cultural touchstones. 

Though De La Cruz is also from the Valley, her support is stronger in counties farther upstate and ranchlands away from the border, according to the poll results.

Her campaign did not respond to interview requests. 

Looking like a jigsaw puzzle piece, the 15th District runs north from the border through sparsely populated, brush-choked oil and cattle country. The Stars and Stripes dominate among the few flags flying on ranch gates and along urban streets. Deeply proud of their Mexican heritage, many district residents also are resolutely American.

Lourdes Trevino-Cantu, 73, a retired high school librarian and lifelong resident of Falfurrias, now runs the town’s small but intriguing Heritage Museum, which focuses heavily on ranch life, the Texas Rangers and Mexican American culture.  

With the decline of ranching and the local oil industry, many Anglos who once held sway here — in politics and business — have moved away, Trevino-Cantu said. The Mexican Americans who remain feel their political allegiances pulled left and right.

“If I wasn’t personally connected to Bobby Pulido, I would probably be confused,” she said. “Those who voted for Trump last time are going to vote for Trump again because they don’t want to admit they were wrong. They believed in his promises that turned out to be lies.”

‘A terrible policy’

Ads on televisions in restaurants in Falfurrias, George West and other district towns warn that Pulido, Talarico and other Democrats are “radical” and “dangerous” Texans. One ad advises South Texans and Texans in general to vote Republican to get Trump’s agenda “across the line.”

Valley businessman Abad Morales, 36, said he’s done with fear-mongering. Though he supports tightening enforcement on the border, Morales has been outraged by detention and deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement of undocumented migrants who are otherwise law-abiding.

“I’m not going to lie, I did vote for Trump,” said Morales, who’s running as a Democrat for city commission in Weslaco, a border city in them15th District. “I am not against controlling the border, but what they are doing with deporting people is different.”

In an interview, Pulido said he supports tougher border enforcement. But he is also calling for immigration reform to help border families as well as farmers, builders and other businesses that depend on migrant labor.

“Catch and release,” the Biden-era policy that allowed entry to hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, “was a terrible policy, terrible,” Pulido has said. Apart from attracting millions of poor migrants to the border, the policy resulted in log-jammed immigration courts and delayed or derailed residency claims by residents or their relatives. 

‘A rejection of both parties’

Pulido’s bid to unseat De La Cruz, an ally of Trump, is among the most watched races in the country because it might be indicating another shift in the Latino vote. Long a bastion of the Democratic Party, the Mexican American vote shifted dramatically in favor of Trump and the GOP in the past decade.

Latino voters are becoming even more crucial as they look for a political home.

“What appears to be happening is more of a de-alignment than a re-alignment,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican political analyst and expert on the Latino vote. He co-founded the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump organization. 

“It’s really more rejection of both parties,” Madrid said. 

Pulido’s son Rodrigo and wife Mariana (Michael Gonzalez for Puente News Collaborative)

African American voters are largely sticking with the Democrats, Madrid said. The Republican base — working class, white and non-college voters — are sticking with the party, despite economic pain, the Iran war and other worries, he said.

“The only group that’s moving are Latinos, and that swing you’re going to see a full display in the San Joaquin Valley, Allentown (Pennsylvania) and Rio Grande Valley,” Madrid said. “In many ways, the valleys in Pennsylvania, California and Texas represent the future of this country.”

‘Almost at the finish line’

Inside Bert Ogden Arena, Tejano music fan Martha Garcia, 54, anxiously waited for Pulido’s “La Ultima Desvelada” — the last sleepless party — to begin. She had mixed emotions. 

A lifelong fan of Pulido, she said she felt “sad that he won’t sing again,” but “I don’t know him as a politician. I don’t know how or what he will do.” 

She remains unsure if she’ll vote this time around. “The Democrats ignored us, but the Republicans are killing us” with high prices, tariffs and those “ugly ICE raids,” she said.

“I hope if Bobby wins he can turn the page,” she added. 

Pulido’s chances may rest on getting people like Garcia to cast a ballot. About half of registered voters didn’t bother in the 2024 presidential election.

While he’s popular in the borderlands, turnout in the northern parts of the 15th District could overwhelm his support.

“We’re almost at the finish line,” Pulido said at a recent event for other local candidates. “But if you don’t vote, we can lose this.” 

The post Poll: Bobby Pulido Appears Poised to Flip the 15th Congressional District appeared first on The Texas Observer.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Regulators in Texas did not stop processing permits for data center projects when Gov. Greg Abbott ordered a pause last month, according to an analysis of public records released Monday by the oil and gas watchdog group FracTracker. 

Amid an upswell of public opposition to the booming buildout of digital infrastructure in Texas, Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in a Sept. 21 letter “to halt all permits sought by data centers.”   

But FracTracker, in collaboration with Public Citizen, identified 35 permitting actions taken by the TCEQ for data center projects in subsequent weeks.

“TCEQ has continued reviewing applications and issuing approvals that allow data center development to proceed,” the groups said in a press release Monday. “These actions do not signal an agency trying to pause.”

Greg Abbott speaks during an election night campaign event in November 2022. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

In response, Abbott Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris indicated that the pause applied to approval, not processing, of permits.

“No permits have been approved,” Mahaleris said in a statement. “In line with the Governor’s directive, TCEQ has not taken and will not take any proactive actions related to the approval of data center permits.”

Abbott has described his moratorium as an opportunity for state agencies to evaluate the facilities’ impact on water resources and grid stability. 

“No other state agency shall move forward with regulatory approvals related to data centers until this information is acquired,” Abbott wrote in his Sept. 21 letter to TCEQ executive director Kelly Keel. 

TCEQ responded to Abbott in an Oct. 19 letter, which was provided to Inside Climate News by Ryan Vise, TCEQ’s director of external relations.

In the letter, Steven Schar, TCEQ’s interim executive director, wrote: “TCEQ staff are screening pending permit applications to determine if they are subject to the directive. If a permit application is subject to the directive, TCEQ has paused that permit application.”

Since the Sept. 21 directive, the TCEQ has fast-tracked or assigned engineers to 14 permits, approved stormwater coverage for 11, certified emissions estimates for seven and issued public notice for three, according to permitting documents collected by FracTracker and Public Citizen. 

The permits regard construction of gas power generation facilities for energy-hungry facilities. All of the largest gas power projects currently proposed in Texas are specifically intended to serve data centers, which are primarily planned to run artificial intelligence.

The projects would release tens of thousands of tons of regulated pollutants, according to permitting documents, as well as more than 100 million tons per year of greenhouse gases—an enormous amount roughly equal to the annual emissions of a mid-sized industrialized country.

The day after Abbott’s pause on data center permits, on Sept. 22, FracTracker and Public Citizen found that TCEQ mailed notices of preliminary approval to three major projects: NRG Prairie Energy Center, VoltaGrid’s ABI-1 power plant and Nexus’s self-powered data center in Hubbard. 

The agency opened public comment periods on two of those projects in following days. 

FracTracker and Public Citizen found approvals of stormwater management permits for data center construction issued after Sept. 21, including for Caldwell Valley Technology Park in Caldwell County, Crusoe’s Abilene campus and EdgeConneX’s Cedar Creek campus.

The report identified numerous other projects that continue to advance through permitting. For example, records show the TCEQ received a permit application for generators at Edged Energy in Dallas on Oct. 6, and an engineer completed an initial review on Oct. 9.  

“Our research uncovered glaring inconsistencies between regulatory actions and Governor Abbott’s directives,” said Sam Law, manager of communications at FracTracker Alliance and author of the report. “We need an actual pause to study the threats posed to the land, water and livelihoods of Texans.”

The post Texas Continued Permitting Data Centers After Abbott’s Pause, Report Finds  appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The call came at noon on a Friday from a number I did not recognize. It was my client’s brother. He had been trying to reach me for days, as I had been trying to reach my client for weeks through the jail’s messaging portal. 

My client never replied. 

“He is nonverbal,” is the first thing his brother told me. The brother went on to explain that my client has a severe intellectual disability, that he has been through the county’s mental health system, and that a court found him incompetent earlier this year. Because of the nature of his disability, his competency was never going to be restored.  Still, he was stuck in the county jail unable to post a $10,000 bond. 

The charge? A non-violent misdemeanor. 

In the tired voice of someone who has told this story many times before, his brother explained that my client likes to take walks in the evening. Sometimes officers stop and question him and because he cannot answer, they mistake it for noncompliance—failure to comply, resisting, or interfering are criminal offenses in Texas—and arrest him. This was not the first time.

While this man sat in jail, a key document that could get him released sat in the county’s files. A doctor had examined him and had filed a written report finding him incompetent in February, in an earlier case, in front of the same court. Still I, the lawyer appointed to defend him, didn’t get that information. Instead, I received only a one-page mental health intake sheet from the jail that said my client had answered “no” to questions about suicide, alcohol, and drug use.

I now know that information was wrong. He is nonverbal. He cannot answer no.

I have thought about that piece of paper more than is probably healthy, and I still do not know how a government form recorded the “spoken” answers of a man without speech, and at the end of that process, a magistrate judge set bond at $10,000 for a man who could not have asked for a lawyer even if his life depended on it. Which, in a way, it did. 

Most of us never consider how bail works, but we should. Almost everything that happened to my client happened because of that dysfunctional system. A bond is money you put up to guarantee that you will return to court. Post it and you go home while you fight your case; fail to post it and you sit in a cell until the case ends. A bondsman will assist for a fee of around ten percent, which on a $10,000 bond is a thousand dollars. My client is cared for full time by his brother, and he has no income and no way to earn any, so there was never a version of this story where he paid and went home. 

Fortunately, the prosecutor on this case is one of the best I have worked with. I called him that Friday and told him what I’d learned, and I asked that we move to dismiss the charges given the prior evaluation. I told him I did not want my client sitting in jail through the weekend. He immediately filed to dismiss, and my client was released.

I could tell you at least a dozen stories similar to this one. They all share a common theme: In a cash bail system, justice depends on the size of your bank account. Asking a judge to lower a bond means requesting a separate hearing that can take months, especially in a small county. And if you cannot pay, the fastest way out of a cell is to plead guilty, not to win and not to be found innocent but to give up. People take the plea, and if I were in their position, I probably would too. 

This kind of thing doesn’t happen much in Harris County anymore, which is the reason I am telling you this. It happened 100 miles down the road in one of the small Texas counties where I take court appointments.

In Harris County, it would not have gone the same way, and not because the people there are any better at their jobs. It is because a federal court order prevents it. Since 2019, Harris County has operated under the ODonnell consent decree, which came out of a lawsuit filed by a woman arrested for driving with an invalid license who could not afford a $2,500 bond. 

That decree clearly works and saves taxpayers’ money—though it is currently being challenged in federal court. Before that decree, roughly 40 percent of everyone arrested on a misdemeanor in Harris County sat in jail for the entire time their case was pending, not because a judge found them dangerous but because they could not pay. And 84 percent of those still in jail when their cases ended pled guilty just to get out. 

Under the consent decree, most people arrested on Class A and B misdemeanors are released automatically pretrial. Those reforms, researchers found, have cut misdemeanor system costs by about a third, roughly $1,191 per case. Almost 28,000 cases a year now qualify for release without anyone paying a bond.

In response to an appeal, Senior U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal refused to vacate the order on October 5. She reasoned that the four misdemeanor judges who filed motions challenging the consent decree, and the Texas attorney general, had all missed their deadlines to make certain arguments. But another appeal has already been filed.

Two things from that briefing stayed with me. First, Harris County, the government that actually got sued, said it would need a full year to prepare if the consent decree were to be vacated in order to hire staff and possibly build another jail facility. So Harris County is on record saying that if it returns to cash bail, it lacks room to house all the people who would be stuck in custody, unable to bond out.

The second is the attorney general’s argument that throwing out the order takes away no remedy an individual arrestee could pursue in state court.

Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks outside the U.S. Supreme Court. (Bryan Olin Dozier/NurPhoto via AP)

I practice in state court, and I would love to tell you that the system works. Unfortunately, pursuing a remedy there looks like filing a written motion and waiting months for a hearing you may not get. It looks like appearing by video on the day your client, still in jail, pleads guilty just to go home to family. It looks like a man who cannot speak and was stuck in jail on a $10,000 bond because nobody sent his lawyer the document saying he had already been found incompetent. 

Harris County is rare, because a multitude of people here are fighting for the rights of clients like the one I described. In fact, 12 of the 16 misdemeanor judges, the county itself, and the sheriff all fought efforts to overturn the order that helps poor people accused of minor crimes who can’t post bond—even though the order also limits county officials’ own authority. That’s not something leaders often do. 

My job is mostly to point out how and when the system fails, and for that reason I think it is equally important to say so when the system gets something right, but the fight is not finished. 

What should worry everyone outside Harris County is none of these reforms reach the rest of us. In the rural county I described above there is no consent decree, and no published data on how many people remain stuck in jail on minor charges because of an inability to post bond. The only reason Harris County knows that 28,000 cases a year clear the jail without anyone paying bond is that the county is required to track that data.

Pretty much everywhere else, nobody is counting. This is not about any one judge, prosecutor, or officer. Most have done right by my clients when it counted, including in the case I described. It’s about what a cash bond does to a person who has no cash. 

My nonverbal client, if relief had not been granted, was never going to be able to post a $10,000 bond. For him, the bond was not a condition he could satisfy, it was a sentence. It was a wall. And in a county with no order instructing it otherwise, the only thing that removed that wall was a brother who found my phone number. My client is fortunate to have such a brother. Most do not.

The post In a Cash Bail System, Justice Depends on Your Bank Account appeared first on The Texas Observer.

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.

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