Justin Ho

I forgot my machete, Ted.

Along with Ted Bettner, a senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute.

He just wrote a report on orphaned oil wells like the one they're looking for.

I smelled it just now.

It smells like sulfur or rotten eggs.

They pull back vines to reveal an old, unassuming, four-foot-tall metal structure.

It looks like a scuba tank topped with some metal connector pieces.

Turns out it is an oil well from 1939.

It likely stopped being useful decades ago.

It's orphaned because the company in charge of it is long gone.

So now it's the state's problem.

When wells like this one sit unplugged, hissing and smelling, lawyer David McMahon says they cause a whole host of problems.

Methane leaks out of them into the atmosphere.

Methane, as in the potent planet-warming gas, major player in climate change.

Poisoning soil and water, harming crops and livestock.

They can have problems with the coal seam that they penetrated.

Because if a coal miner runs into an oil well, it can explode or leak and poison the people working down there.

The methane can go down into people's groundwater.

I've seen people light their faucets in their sinks.

And flammable drinking water is bad.