Mark Olalde, formerly of the Center for Public Integrity, and Ryan Menezes of the Los Angeles Times have won the National Press Foundation’s Thomas L. Stokes Award for Best Energy and Environment Writing for two stories exposing the uncovered costs of cleaning up abandoned oil and gas wells in California.

The Deseret News in Salt Lake City and The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, both won honorable mention for stories about radon pollution on land and a bacterial menace lurking in warming oceans.

Olalde and Menezes’ investigation, “When the Wells Run Dry,” revealed that California taxpayers are on the hook for roughly $6 billion in clean-up costs for abandoned old wells. Companies are supposed to plug the wells to prevent them from leaking gases that are dangerous to nearby residents and also emit greenhouse gases.

Oil derricks rise above homes in this 1923 photo of the city of Signal Hill in Los Angeles County. (Aerograph Co. via the Library of Congress)

But Olalde and Menezes found that companies have posted bonds that cover only a tiny fraction of actual cleanup costs — and the firms can avoid paying the rest by declaring bankruptcy. Five months after their story warned that a major California oil company’s idle wells posed a substantial risk to taxpayers, the company filed for bankruptcy.

Elvia Garcia was evacuated from her home in Arvin, a farming community southeast of Bakersfield, when a pipeline servicing this well leaked explosive levels of gas. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Judges called the work “a fabulous example of public-service journalism.” They also praised the accompanying interactive map that allows readers to look up whether hazardous wells are present in their neighborhoods.

Olalde is now the environmental reporter for the Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Calif.  Menezes is a data journalist at the Los Angeles Times.

Sara Israelsen-Hartley of the Deseret News won honorable mention for stories about the hazards of the carcinogenic gas radon in Utah.  Although Utah has the lowest smoking rate in the nation, more people in the state die of lung cancer than any other type of cancer and radon is thought to be a culprit. Utah has no meaningful regulations for radon, even though one in three homes have dangerous levels of the gas, Israelsen-Hartley reported.

Judges noted that the work had tangible effects, with legislation enacted directing the state Department of Natural Resources to study informing the public of the hazards of radon and recommend ways to mitigate the danger to public health hazard.

Israelsen-Hartley’s work was supported by the University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.

A second honorable mention was awarded to a 10-member team for a series, titled “Danger Beyond the Beach” that examined the health toll that climate change is already taking on the people who live and work in the Carolinas.

Judges found the work broke new ground in examining how toxic bacteria called vibrio killed a crabber in South Carolina in 2017 and a growing number of other victims. The stories explained why rising seas and storm surges make the flesh-eating bacteria a growing threat to swimmers, fishermen and others who work in coastal waters around the world. And they reported on the increased asthma and illnesses from mold that have become a chronic health problem after increasingly powerful storms.

The seven-part series was funded by Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and Columbia Journalism Investigations and produced by Lynn Bonner, Sammy Fretwell, Adam Wagner, Aaron Sanchez-Guerra, Josh Boucher, Travis Long, Julia Wall, Ali Rah and Sofia Moutinho. It was edited by Dan Barkin and published by the News & Observer.

The Thomas L. Stokes Award was established in the spring of 1959 by friends and admirers of the late Thomas L. Stokes, a syndicated Washington columnist on national affairs. It is given annually for the best reporting “in the independent spirit of Tom Stokes” on subjects of interest to him including energy, natural resources and the environment.

Judges for the award were Tom Davidson of Gannett, Debbie Elliott of National Public Radio, Ronnie Greene of Thomson Reuters and Rod Kuckro of Twin Matrix.