Oil, gas sites spewing ills?

Monks said he's concerned not only about what's in the air that's making his family and others sick, but the possibility that groundwater in the area may be contaminated. The well that provides the Monks family with water is only 40 feet deep. El Paso has already dug at least 20 feet down, according to public health officials, and is still finding contamination.

"We drink bottled water," Monks said. "We haven't drunk our tap water for a year now."

Janet Panas can see the El Paso site from the back porch of the home she's lived in since 1990. Panas had to take her 1-year-old grandson Atticus Panas, who also has a history of asthma, to the emergency room in respiratory distress on April 27. Doctors were able to stabilize the boy without hospitalizing him, but Panas said she's tired of feeling ill all the time and having the smell of natural gas saturating her home almost daily.

"I love where I live, I just get sick of dealing with the stuff we're dealing with," Panas said. "I just wish they would have been open and up front with us about this from the beginning, instead of being so secretive."

Jim Springer, spokesman for the state Division of Oil, Gas and Mining, said the agency approved El Paso's remediation plan before issuing a permit for the cleanup. He said the division will now wait for findings from environmental health officials before allowing any future work at the site.

"What's being done on site there is pretty common to other sites," Springer said of the cleanup. "What might be happening there, we're really at a loss to say. We'll just have to wait for the report."

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E-mail: geoff@ubstandard.com