Mark Olalde is a reporter covering the environment in the Southwest. Before joining ProPublica, he wrote for The Desert Sun, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. His investigations, which have taken him to numerous countries, have also been published in the Los Angeles Times, High Country News, USA Today and international outlets. Olalde's coverage of hidden cleanup liabilities in California's oilfields earned him the 2020 Stokes Award. His work on South Africa's abandoned mines prompted a parliamentary investigation and saw him recognized in 2017 as the country's top print reporter covering the environment.
Oklahoma’s oil industry pays into a voluntary fund to clean up oil wells, but many drillers opt out. The money that has been refunded to these companies in recent years could have restored an estimated 1,500 orphan well sites.
State regulators could have asked oil companies California Resources Corp. and Aera Energy for an estimated $2.4 billion to guarantee wells are plugged but decided they didn’t have the authority to do so.
In New Mexico, oil companies agreed to work with regulators to find a solution to the state’s more than 70,000 unplugged wells. After months of negotiations, the industry turned against the bill it helped shape.
The oil and gas industry has reaped profits without ensuring there will be money to plug and clean up their wells. In Oklahoma, that work could cost more than $7 billion if it falls to the state.
The new Bureau of Land Management regulation, which applies to nearly 90,000 wells on federal public land, is hampered by math errors and overly optimistic cost projections.
Unplugged oil and gas wells accelerate climate change, threaten public health and risk hitting taxpayers’ pocketbooks. ProPublica and Capital & Main found that the money set aside to fix the problem falls woefully short of the impending cost.
J.B. Hamby, California’s representative in talks about sharing water from the Colorado River, holds the keys to a quarter of the river’s flow — and its future.
Tens of millions of people — and millions of acres of farmland — rely on the Colorado River’s water. But as its supply shrinks, these farmers get more water from the river than entire states.
Records unearthed by a University of Virginia professor shed new light on states’ vocal opposition in the 1950s to tribes claiming their share of the river. Today, many are still fighting to secure water.
The bill, which awaits a decision by Gov. Gavin Newsom, follows ProPublica’s reporting on the multibillion-dollar cost to clean up California’s oil and gas industry and the exodus of major companies shifting ownership of thousands of aging wells.
The Chemehuevi’s reservation fronts about 30 miles of the Colorado River, yet 97% of the tribe’s water stays in the river, much of it used by Southern California cities. The tribe isn’t paid for it.
Decades of negotiations between the tribe and Arizona over water rights have proven fruitless. The court case was the Navajo Nation’s bid to accelerate the process and secure water for its reservation.
As it negotiates water rights with tribes, Arizona goes to unique lengths to extract concessions that limit tribes’ opportunities for growth and economic development, according to a ProPublica and High Country News investigation.
Drought-plagued Nevada pledged to do away with 3,900 acres of grass in the Las Vegas area within six years, but a ProPublica analysis found that the state grossly overestimated how much of that grass would likely be removed.
An expert used California regulators’ methodology to estimate the cost of cleaning up the state’s onshore oil and gas industry. The study found that cleanup costs will be triple the industry’s projected profits.
For the first time, ProPublica has cataloged cleanup efforts at the 50-plus sites where uranium was processed to fuel the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Even after regulators say cleanup is complete, polluted water and sickness are often left behind.
Shell and ExxonMobil are selling their California wells despite oil selling at high prices. Experts say one reason is looming liability for environmental cleanup.
Time and again, mining company Homestake and government agencies promised to clean up waste from decades of uranium processing. It didn’t happen. Now they’re trying a new tactic: buying out homeowners to avoid finishing the job.
Across the country, companies have been handing off uranium mills and disposal sites to the federal government. ProPublica wants to understand the process from all sides.
Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following:
You have to credit ProPublica and any co-reporting partners. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication(s).” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by ProPublica.” You must link the word “ProPublica” to the original URL of the story.
If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our PixelPing tag.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. For more information about canonical metadata, refer to this Google SEO link.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Please contact [email protected].
It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublica’s work.
You can’t sell our material separately or syndicate it. This includes publishing or syndicating our work on platforms or apps such as Apple News, Google News, etc.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact [email protected].)
You can’t use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language.
Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts for ProPublica on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Copy and paste the following into your page to republish:
