Funding will help seal thousands of abandoned oil wells in Southern California and statewide
California is home to thousands of oil and gas wells abandoned years ago and never properly sealed — many of them sitting near homes, schools and businesses from the coast to the Inland Empire. With no legally responsible party to clean them up, environmental leaders say that 5,356 abandoned and deserted wells now sprawl across Southern California and the state, polluting drinking water and leaking methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. That is about to change as the state gets millions of dollars in state and federal funding to safely seal old wells.