Oil and gas have boomed in New Mexico. Its schools are contending with pollution's effects

Los Angeles Times

2 days ago

COUNSELOR, N.M. — On a Tuesday in March, Billton Werito drove his son Amari toward his house in Counselor, N.M., driving past natural gas pipelines, wellheads and water tanks. Amari should have been in school, but a bout of nausea and a dull headache kept him from class.
'It happens a lot,' Amari explained from the backseat. The symptoms usually show up when the sixth grader smells an odor of 'rotten egg with propane' that rises from nearby gas wells and wafts over Lybrook Elementary School, where he and some 70 other Navajo students attend class. His little brother often misses school for the same reason.
'They just keep getting sick,' Amari's father, Billton, said. 'Especially the younger one, he's been throwing up and won't eat.' The symptoms are putting the kids at risk of falling further behind in school.
Lybrook sits in the heart of New Mexico's San Juan Basin, a major oil and gas deposit that, along with the Permian Basin in the state's southeast, is supplying natural gas that meets much of the nation's electricity demand.
The New Mexican gas has reaped huge benefits. Natural gas has become a go-to fuel for power plants, sometimes replacing dirtier coal-fired plants and improving air quality. Oil and gas companies employ thousands of workers, often in areas with few other opportunities, and their revenue boosts the state's budget.
But those benefits may come at a cost for thousands of students in New Mexico whose schools sit near pipelines, wellheads and flare stacks. An Associated Press analysis found 694 oil and gas wells with new or active permits within a mile of a school in the state. This means around 29,500 students in 74 schools and preschools potentially face exposure to noxious emissions that can be released during extraction.
At Lybrook, Amari's school, fewer than 6% of students are proficient at math, and only a fifth meet state standards for science and reading proficiency.
Other factors could help explain poor achievement. AP's analysis found two-thirds of the schools within a mile of an oil or gas well are low-income.
But research has found student learning is directly harmed by air pollution from fossil fuels — even when socioeconomic factors are taken into account.
The risks go far beyond New Mexico. An AP analysis of data from the Global Oil and Gas Extraction Tracker found more than 1,000 public schools across 13 states within five miles of a major oil or gas field.
'This kind of air pollution has a real, measurable effect on students,' said Mike Gilraine, an economics professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Gilraine's research has shown student test scores are closely associated with air contamination.
America's shift to natural gas has resulted in substantial increases in student achievement nationwide, Gilraine's research shows, as it has displaced dirtier coal and led to cleaner air on the whole. But there have been little data on air quality across New Mexico, even as it has become one of the most productive states in the nation for natural gas. State regulators have installed only 20 permanent air monitors, most in areas without oil or gas production.
Independent researchers have extensively studied the air quality near schools in at least two locations in the state, however. One is Lybrook, which sits within a mile of 17 active oil and gas wells.
In 2024, a study at the school found levels of pollutants — including benzene, a cancer-causing byproduct of natural gas production that is particularly harmful to children — were spiking during school hours, to nearly double the levels known to cause chronic or acute health effects.
That research followed a 2021 health impact assessment that found more than 90% of area residents surveyed suffered from sinus problems. Nosebleeds, shortness of breath and nausea were widespread. The report attributed the symptoms to the high levels of pollutants — including, near Lybrook, hydrogen sulfide, a compound that gives off the sulfur smell that Amari associates with his headaches.
Those studies helped confirm what many community members already knew, said Daniel Tso, a community leader who helped oversee the 2021 health impact assessment.
'The children and the grandchildren need a safe homeland,' Tso said in March, standing outside a cluster of gas wells within a mile of Lybrook Elementary.
'You smell that?' he said, nodding toward a nearby wellhead, which smelled like propane. 'I've had people visiting this area from New York. They spend five minutes here and say, 'Hey, I got a headache.' And the kids are what, six hours a day at the school breathing this?'
Lybrook school officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Researchers have identified similar air quality problems in New Mexico's southeast. In 2023, a yearlong study of the air in Loving found air quality was worse than in downtown Los Angeles, containing the fifth-highest level of measured ozone contamination in the U.S.
The source of the ozone — a pollutant that's especially hazardous to children — was the area's network of gas wells. Some of that infrastructure sits within a half-mile of Loving's schools.
For most locals, any concerns about pollution are outweighed by the industry's economic benefits. Representatives of the oil and gas industry have claimed the air quality studies themselves are not trustworthy. Andrea Felix, vice president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Assn. (NMOGA), said other sources of emissions, such as cars and trucks, are likely a larger source of air quality problems near wells.
Officials with Loving schools are also skeptical. Superintendent Lee White said funds from the oil and gas industry paid for a new wing at the elementary school, a science lab for students, turf on the sports field and training for teachers. In the most recent fiscal year, oil and gas revenue supported $1.7 billion in K-12 spending in New Mexico, according to an NMOGA report.
'Are we willing to give that up because people say our air is not clean?' White asked. 'It's just as clean as anywhere else.'