In This Tiny New Mexico Town, the Air Quality Is Worse Than in Downtown L.A.

A group of air quality scientists with decades of experience have found some of the worst air pollution they’ve encountered in years in the tiny town of Loving, New Mexico, where the ozone level is often worse than it is in downtown Los Angeles. 

Despite the elevated readings, the Environmental Protection Agency — the primary enforcer of the nation’s Clean Air Act — has not acted on the findings, or other existing data documenting years of pollution in the area — despite rules indicating that they could.

In April 2023, five scientists working with a grant from HEI Energy began monitoring the air quality in Loving, a mostly Latino town of 1,400 in the middle of the Permian Basin, the country’s most productive oilfield. Millions of samples later, the collected data consistently showed high levels of a broad range of air pollutants, including toxic volatile organic compounds and ozone levels that regularly exceeded federal Clean Air Act guidelines. But the EPA has not declared the area an ozone nonattainment zone, which would force corrective action. In the Permian Basin, that would mean a crackdown on the oil and gas industry, the area’s main polluter.

For context, the California Air Resources Board measured ozone levels in downtown Los Angeles exceeding the EPA pollution threshold 23 times last year while HEI Energy’s data showed ozone levels in Loving exceeded the EPA threshold 31 times. The EPA declared Los Angeles County an ozone nonattainment zone decades ago, leading to cleaner air in a city once synonymous with ozone-laden smog.

Loving, so far, has been left to live with an industry whose activities residents say have crept closer and closer to homes. 

“Growing up, the oilfield presence wasn’t at our back doors like that,” said Jodee Zuñiga, who grew up in Loving. “In these past few years, it really has pushed into our doors, and it’s right, you know, in our homes at this point.”

The ozone measured by the HEI Energy study is part of a toxic soup of airborne pollutants from oil and gas production found in Loving. The group collected data on 17 different chemical and other physical quantities, from benzene levels to wind speed to solar intensity, dozens of times a day. It documented high levels of methane, ethane and other volatile organic compounds indicating that the ozone comes from oil and gas production and not other causes. By comparison, many of the chemical levels recorded were far greater than those found in Colorado’s Denver-Julesburg Basin, another of the country’s most productive oil fields and one the EPA declared an ozone nonattainment area. The Loving study also recorded a radiation plume blowing into Loving from the northwest. 

Ozone forms when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds — released from producing and burning fossil fuels — react with heat and sunlight in the atmosphere to produce a dangerous three-lobed oxygen molecule. The EPA says the oddly shaped molecules cause serious health problems: inflaming airways, making it difficult to breathe, leaving the lungs susceptible to infection and aggravating asthma, emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

“Well over 90% of these ozone-forming volatile organic compounds [in Loving] are resulting from oil and gas emissions,” said Detlev Helmig, director of Boulder AIR, the company that assembled and managed the testing equipment. One key compound monitored during the study is ethane. “Ethane doesn’t come from cows, it doesn’t come from landfills, it doesn’t come from swamps, doesn’t come from cars,” he said. “It’s 99-point-something percent driven by natural gas.”

Gunnar Schade, an associate professor at Texas A&M University, said older scientists like himself have seen higher ozone levels in the past. “That source was, of course, dense car traffic, and it was mostly happening in densely populated areas” — areas like Los Angeles. Schade is one of the five researchers on the project, which includes Helmig and scientists from UCLA, USC and the University of Toronto. 

Schade said that compared to other parts of the country today, Loving “is not ‘normal,’” a result of pollution numbers that began rising a decade ago in oil and gas-producing regions. “We knew it was possible, even though we did not know how bad it could get,” he said.

“Pollution has come down so much across most of the U.S.,” Helmig said. “This area has gone backwards, though. And this was foreseeable.”

The moon rises over a compressor station operated by Chevron a few miles south of Loving, NM. In July, the EPA and New Mexico Environment Department named Chevron and seven other companies as having violated state and federal air quality rules. Photo: Jerry Redfern.

When asked about HEI Energy’s findings, Joe Robledo, a press officer for the EPA, said the decision not to label the Permian Basin a nonattainment area was made in 2018, “based on the most current, complete and quality-assured data at that time.” In 2018, however, New Mexico’s oil production — primarily in the Permian Basin — was just one-third of what it is today. 

Robledo said the EPA relies on records from an air monitoring station operated by the New Mexico Environment Department. That station is 12 miles up the road from Loving on the outskirts of Carlsbad, the biggest town in the region. The Environment Department and HEI Energy stations monitor many of the same things, but have very different neighbors: There are 25 active oil and gas wells within a mile of the HEI Energy site, with four more on the way. By contrast, there are three active wells within a mile of the Environment Department’s Carlsbad site. 

Michelle Miano, director of the Environmental Protection Division at the New Mexico Environment Department, shared certified data her department sent to the EPA that shows the Carlsbad site has exceeded the National Ambient Air Quality Standard every year from 2019 to 2023. The formula to determine noncompliance uses a rolling three-year average of the fourth-highest, eight-hour average reading at a site. If that three-year average shows ozone levels above 70 parts per billion, the EPA can declare a nonattainment zone. A nonattainment declaration forces a state to develop a plan to dramatically reduce ozone levels, with EPA oversight. In New Mexico’s Permian Basin, that would mean sharply reducing pollution from oil and gas operations.

When asked why the area hasn’t been declared an ozone nonattainment zone, Miano said, “EPA has the responsibility to issue a nonattainment designation. At this point, NMED does not have an opinion regarding why EPA has or has not issued such designation.”

Robledo said that the EPA has discretion over how it declares nonattainment areas under the Clean Air Act. He pointed to recent rules implemented by New Mexico and the EPA aimed at reducing oilfield air pollution and said, “The EPA is considering whether these emission reduction rules will be sufficient to bring the New Mexico area into compliance.” 

New Mexico’s groundbreaking methane waste rule and ozone precursor rule went into effect in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Yet since then, ozone levels have actually increased at the Carlsbad monitoring station, according to the data from the Environment Department. The EPA just instituted its own methane rule earlier this year.

Helmig says the rules cannot be effective without rigorous monitoring. “Your governments praise themselves with having implemented more, stricter regulations on emissions and so forth,” he said, “but without really monitoring it and verifying it with high quality data … this is wishful thinking.” 

The HEI Energy researchers first presented the project to the New Mexico Environment Department in early 2022, well before it was launched. In a twist, HEI Energy’s main funders are the EPA and major oil and gas companies. The group notes that researchers like those in Loving operate independently and funders have no say in the work. Helmig had hoped the Environment Department would audit the data to assure accuracy and help fund future work that was clearly in the state’s interest. “I was expecting this jumping up and down in joy,” Helmig said. “We didn’t get that.” 

A pumpjack operates north of Carlsbad, NM. A New Mexico Environment Department air quality monitoring station in Carlsbad recorded ozone levels that could lead to the region being declared an ozone nonattainment zone by the EPA. The air pollution comes from oil and gas operations in the area. Photo: Jerry Redfern.

Miano said the reason the data wasn’t audited is simple: They don’t have the money. Since HEI Energy’s grant ran out in June, the monitoring station has reduced operations, tracking just ozone and methane while the scientists look for new funding.

Helmig said the radiation plume blowing into Loving is “significant,” but its source isn’t clear. The EPA calls radioactive contamination “widespread” in the fossil fuel industry. Nuclear isotopes naturally occur in oil and gas formations and can form radioactive buildup inside well pipes and equipment. That buildup is released when equipment is cleaned, and oilfield service shops line the road connecting Carlsbad with Loving. 

Miano said the Environment Department is investigating the issue. Robledo at EPA didn’t answer questions about the plume.

Much of the Colorado Front Range stretching northeast from Denver was declared an ozone nonattainment zone years ago due to traffic pollution and emissions from oil and gas production. Local governments there hired Helmig’s company to track air pollution from new oilfield developments in the middle of growing residential areas in the booming Denver-Boulder suburbs.

Laurie Anderson, a city councilmember in Broomfield, Colorado, in the heart of that oilfield, believes monitoring by Boulder AIR has helped her town keep air pollution in check and identify polluters quickly. 

That data from the monitoring also shows that the pollution levels tracked by Boulder AIR in Broomfield and other Front Range communities are far lower than those recorded in Loving. 

“The challenge with these [air quality management] programs is they all come with a high price tag,” Anderson said. “It’s not cheap at all.” She said that the technology, operation and data wrangling for two monitoring stations cost the city about $1 million a year. By comparison, the facility in Loving cost $500,000 to set up and more than $23,000 a month to operate. 

“We’re bringing in a few million dollars this year from oil and gas revenues, so you can use that to offset the cost,” Anderson said. Even so, it’s a hard sell to people who don’t live near the oilfield developments. “My constituents are all heavily impacted by oil and gas … they see the very real need” for monitoring, she said. “The data is invaluable.”

When HEI Energy’s Loving site was fully operational, it published its data on a website aimed at the area’s largely Latino population. That data would be hard for the small town to afford on its own, with just 1,400 residents, an average household income of $50,000 and an employment rate of 44%. By comparison, Broomfield has 74,000 people, an average household income of $115,000 and an employment rate of 68%.

Zuñiga, the Loving resident, helped HEI Energy gather air sample canisters and disseminate the air quality information. “There was a website. We made flyers with the QR code. It was very easy to access,” she said.

She would hear about people with respiratory problems, bloody noses or raw throats, “and we were able to get on [the website] and say, yeah, it was a high ozone day.”

The oil and gas industry and its infrastructure surround life in Loving. Her father worked in the oilfields, and six natural gas pipelines run through her grandmother’s backyard. “These are in walking distance, very easily accessible,” she said. “There’s a frack site down the road, also within walking distance. We’re very surrounded.”

Historical data from the HEI Energy project is still available, but up-to-the-hour reporting stopped when the money ran out. “I think it’s very sad, because, you know, when there’s a special situation — which the Permian is a special situation — I think it needs a little more care and a little more attention,” she said. “In a lot of ways, we don’t get that.”

But the HEI Energy facility is still paying attention, if at a lower level, collecting ozone and methane data. And it continues to tell an unexpected story. 

“We thought last year’s ozone season was representative.” Helmig said. “Now it turns out in retrospect, we were wrong … this year is worse.”