Mike Hastings surveys one of the uncapped wells on his property in Western New York. (Credit: WDF)
Mike Hastings, 41, has lived in Western New York his entire life. His home, which he shares with his wife and three children, is situated on 170 acres of forested land near the town of Allegany. The property is home to a winding creek and a diverse range of wildlife, including bears, coyotes and foxes. It also contains 80 abandoned oil wells, remnants of a 19th-century drilling boom in the region.
Hastings is one of many landowners in the area dealing with unplugged wells that are leaking toxins, including methane, a potent greenhouse gas and one of the main contributors to climate change, into the atmosphere and into the groundwater. Efforts to address this kind of legacy pollution would likely take starkly different directions depending on who wins the presidential election.
Vice President Kamala Harris has said climate change is an existential threat, while Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax.”
The Biden-Harris administration created a federal “action plan” in 2021 to reduce methane emissions from food waste, agriculture and the fossil fuel industry. In addition, the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law dedicated $4.7 billion – the largest federal investment of its kind – toward plugging abandoned wells like the ones on Hastings’ property. New York’s share of that money received to date is $50 million, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior.
“The well-capping initiative from the Biden-Harris administration is a crucial step in addressing methane gas emissions,” said Brian Smith, associate executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, an environmental advocacy organization.
In his bid to return to the White House, Trump has vowed to boost the production of oil, natural gas and coal. The Republican Party’s platform states, “We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL and we will become Energy Independent, and even Dominant again.” At the Republican National Convention in July, Trump pledged to dismantle what he called Biden’s “meaningless green new scam ideas.” When Trump was president,his administration eliminated a rule that required oil and gas companies to find and fix methane leaks. And as part of the conservative Project 2025, which Trump has publicly disavowed, the second Trump administration could seek to overhaul the federal government’s climate change regulations.
