"As firefighters continue to battle more than two dozen active wildfires in California, new research has found that millions of people are living in close proximity to oil and gas wells that are in the potential path of flames.
More than 100,000 wells in 19 states west of the Mississippi River are in areas that have burned in recent decades and face a high risk of burning in the future, with the vast majority in California, according to a study published recently in the journal One Earth.
What’s more, nearly 3 million Americans live within 3,200 feet of those wells, putting them at heightened risk of explosions, air and water pollution, infrastructure damage and other hazards.
“One of the things that surprised me was just the extent of how many oil wells had been in wildfire burn areas in the past, and how much this was impacting people in California — and is likely to in the coming century,” said David J.X. González, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at UC Berkeley. "
Hayley Smith reports for the Los Angeles Times July 21, 2024.
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