SHELBY, Mt. — A veteran of the oil industry, Curtis Shuck is on a new path these days: cleaning up the mess left behind by orphaned wells.

"I was raised in a family where we had a principle of leave it better than the way you found it, and so I just, I couldn't just fathom that this was left behind and that people thought that it was okay," he said.

Orphaned wells are oil or natural gas wells that have been abandoned by companies for one reason or another. Like a straw stuck into a juice box, these wells have been left open, many for decades, and are leaking toxins, like methane gas, into the environment.

"Many of these have no control at the surface. You see it’s literally just an open hole at the surface," he said, showing an orphaned well from the 1920's in a field outside of Shelby, Montana.

This is why he started the Well Done foundation, a nonprofit that uses donations to find, measure, report and plug up orphaned wells. It's a process that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

"It was always everybody's dirty little secret. Nobody wanted to talk about it because it was a black eye on the industry, a black eye on the regulatory agencies," said Shuck.

But now, the problem of orphaned wells is becoming too big to be ignored. It’s hard to get exact numbers because the previous owners of the wells are defunct, but the environmental protection agency estimates there are at least 2.1 million wells across the united states.

From California to New York, at least half of the states in America have clusters of abandoned wells.

"Orphan Wells themselves are somewhere between a 10th of a percent and a third of a percent of the U.S. climate footprint," said Adam Peltz, senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Funs.

He said that along with being a leaker of methane gas, orphaned wells are also tied to ground water contamination and air toxins.

"That potentially has public health ramifications impacts on property values, which have impacts downstream on like school funding and stuff like that," he said.

The infrastructure bill that’s been made law has set aside $250 million to plug wells. Peltz says the money will be able to plug 80-100,000 wells. It’s a dent but he believes more needs to be done.

"We need to figure out how to adjust policies so that those wells can be plugged in a timely fashion at the end of their lives," said Peltz.

Meanwhile, Curtis and Well Done have been in communication with different states about best practices to plug orphaned wells, hopefully inspiring others to join the effort to put a cap on this issue.

The Los Angeles City Council has approved a measure to ban new oil and gas wells and phase out existing ones.

The measure would shut down oil and gas fields in the city after a decade of complaints from residents about negative health impacts including nosebleeds, wheezing and coughing. Residents of the city blamed air pollution on the sites.

Activists say that Black and Latino residents of the city are the most affected by pollution from the sites.

The Los Angeles City Council voted on Wednesday for a plan that would phase out new wells over a period of five years. As CNBC reported, over half a million Los Angeles residents live within a quarter-mile of an active oil and gas well, which can release various pollutants including benzene and hydrogen sulfide.

Phaseouts like these are part of what is being seen as a statewide movement in California to move away from fossil fuel production to meet ambitious, but possible climate goals. There's also a strong public health motivation to the movement.

As the Associated Press reported, California's oil and gas regulator proposed in October to ban new oil and gas wells that lie within 3,200 feet of schools, homes, and hospitals.

Existing wells could potentially be subject to new pollution controls.

MONAHANS, Texas -- Every day millions of oil and gas wells perform just like they are supposed to in the United States, providing the energy that helps fuel the American economy.

However, when something does go wrong, it creates fear and anxiety for anyone who lives nearby.

ANTINA RANCH LEAK

"We are at the bottom of an ancient sea," Sarah Stogner said, she is an energy lawyer in Midland, Texas.

Stogner is taking us on a tour of her client's ranch about an hour outside of Midland in an area rich in natural resources.

The first stop is an active leak at one of the old wells on the 20,000-acre ranch.

"We actively have a well flowing uncontrolled to the surface," Stogner said as she walks to the site.

Stogner points out that the water coming out is actually brine.

"We are going to have to monitor the ground water," Stogner said.

"It has benzene in it. I'm not a doctor, but we know benzene is a carcinogen," Stogner said.

"The biggest thing that caused this is the well was drilled in the 1940s, it's been in the ground for 60-something years, it has been exposed to heat, pressure, and chemicals that degrade the quality of the steel pipe," Stogner added.

CONCERN BY RANCH OWNER AND CLEANUP

Ashley Williams Watt owns this ranch and says having an active leak on your property is especially concerning.

"I don't know what's in that water," Williams Watt said.

Williams Watt is concerned about her cattle, which graze the ranch and drink the groundwater.

"I have no confidence that it's drinkable," Williams Watt said.

This leak is being cleaned up by Chevron, who says they are "taking responsibility" for the leak even though they recently sold the mineral rights on the ranch to another company.

Officials with Chevron say they are committed to protecting the environment and indicated their latest lab results show the cattle are safe because the drinking water meets standards.

After our visit to the ranch, Chevron says they successfully stopped the leak and are continuing to work at the property.

NATIONWIDE PROBLEM

What's happening at the Antina Ranch is a microcosm of a growing issue facing the United States.

While any leak is a cause for concern, what has energy and government officials even more worried are old wells with issues that have no company claiming responsibility.

According to the EPA, there are an estimated 2 million abandoned and unplugged oil and gas wells across the United States.

When a site doesn’t have an owner willing to clean it up, they are often known as "orphan wells."

Because orphan wells pose a danger, state governments are forced to clean them up.

Each orphan well cleanup costs taxpayers around $20,000.

President Biden has proposed in his American Jobs plan $16 billion to cleanup old oil and gas sites, although it remains unclear if that plan will pass in Congress.

As for Stogner, she just hopes the country gets a handle on the aging energy infrastructure soon.

"We have to fix this," Stogner said.