大象传媒

This article originally appeared in and was made possible by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.

From behind her FLIR GF320 infrared camera, Kendra Pinto sees plumes of purple smoke otherwise invisible to the naked eye. They鈥檙e full of methane and volatile organic compounds, and they鈥檙e wafting out of an oil tank in New Mexico鈥檚 San Juan Basin.

Pinto, a member of the Din茅 (Navajo) community and field advocate with environmental group Earthworks, relies on this device in her fight to keep her community鈥檚 air clean. She lives in the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation, home to booming oil and gas production.

鈥淲hen I walk outside, I can鈥檛 just think about fresh air. I鈥檓 thinking about the VOCs. I鈥檓 thinking about the methane that I鈥檓 breathing in, because I know what鈥檚 out there,鈥� Pinto said. 鈥淚 see it all the time.鈥�

She鈥檚 one of across the country who are tracking and reporting environmental harms committed by the oil and gas industry to regulators. And here, there are many: The Environmental Defense Fund that each year, New Mexico鈥檚 oil and gas companies emit more than 1.1 million metric tons of methane, a greenhouse gas around in its warming potential than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Much of this comes from wasted natural gas鈥�$271 million of it in this state alone, according to the EDF. It leaks out of faulty equipment and is intentionally expelled through the processes of venting and flaring, in which excess, unrefined natural gas is released or burned from oil wells and refineries to eliminate waste or reduce pressure buildups. 

This is bad for the planet鈥攈igh volumes of methane released into the atmosphere accelerate the pace of the climate crisis. It鈥檚 also bad for the people who live around it who are exposed to the pollutants that methane emissions, like benzene, a carcinogen, and PM2.5 and PM10鈥攑articulate matter small enough to get lodged deep in the lungs. Pinto said her neighbors experience disproportionately high rates of headaches, nosebleeds, allergies, and respiratory issues, like sinus and throat discomfort.

鈥淚 think the scariest thing about methane is it鈥檚 odorless,鈥� Pinto said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a silent killer. And if my neighbors are breathing it in, that鈥檚 worrisome.鈥� 

These emissions and the fossil fuel development that causes them have long been 鈥渋nsufficiently regulated,鈥� said Jon Goldstein, senior director of regulatory and legislative affairs at EDF. In 2020, then-president Donald Trump Obama-era regulations on methane that effectively eliminated the requirement that oil and gas companies monitor and repair methane leaks in their infrastructure. 

The Senate voted in April 2021, and last November, the Biden administration announced it would in an interagency effort to crack down on emissions from the oil and gas sector. As part of the plan, the Environmental Protection Agency , which include a requirement that states reduce methane emissions from thousands of sources nationwide, and a provision that encourages the designed to find major leaks. A final methane rule is expected to be implemented later this year. 

The Navajo Nation, too, is taking things into its own hands: The Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency is currently adopting a permitting program to regulate methane from oil and gas development on its land. 

Here, methane emissions from oil and gas companies are than the national average, seeping out of pipelines, oil rigs, and the like. The San Juan Basin, some 150 miles northwest of Santa Fe, has received a from the American Lung Association for ozone pollution, or smog, the result of the combination between VOCs and radiation from sunlight. 

Exposure to ozone has been tied to and , and it鈥檚 typically seen in cities, Goldstein said. 

鈥淭he San Juan Basin isn鈥檛 home to large cities,鈥� he said. In San Juan County, ozone is the result of the widespread build-out of oil and gas wells; approximately half of the county鈥檚 50,000 residents who identify as Indigenous live of those wells, according to EDF.

Catching emissions at the source will be crucial to changing this legacy. And where regulators can鈥檛 (or won鈥檛) step in, residents like Pinto are. The federal government is now upon community monitoring, or work that citizens do to contribute to public understanding of the scope of air pollution near fossil fuel sites, a development that Eric Kills A Hundred, tribal energy program manager at EDF, believes will be 鈥渉uge.鈥� 

The EPA鈥檚 includes a plan to implement a program to 鈥渆mpower the public to detect and report large emission events for appropriate follow-up by owners and operators,鈥� according to an . 

During the comment period for the EPA鈥檚 proposed community monitoring program, members of the petroleum industry questioned whether the agency has the authority to establish it at all, primarily objecting to the idea that air quality monitoring be conducted by entities other than agencies and producers themselves, 鈥嬧�� in May. 

But Pinto said groups like Earthworks have a track record of long before federal regulators began tapping them for their data collection. 

鈥淒ocumenting these types of emissions is important because no one else is really doing it,鈥� she said. 鈥淓ven the agencies that are regulating this type of thing. Because we鈥檙e in a rural area, what can they actually capture when they come out here? Are they going to more than 100 sites?鈥� 

Kills A Hundred said these efforts are not only about what the Navajo Nation can contribute to government data on methane pollution, they鈥檙e also about empowering the community to play a role in stopping it.

鈥淗aving been the stewards of the land for so long,鈥� he said, 鈥渋t鈥檚 just so important for these communities to be active and raise their voice.鈥�