“Take a deep breath,” EPA Office of Communities, Tribes and Environmental Assessment Director Samantha Phillips Beers said to Stout, a 23-year resident of her Bench Road home, near Crouch Hollow.

“I can’t,” Stout replied. “I have pleurisy.”Stout is one of a growing number of residents in her neighborhood fearful that gas well leaks near their homes have driven skin rashes, respiratory irritation and other adverse health impacts.

Residents and environmental advocates have gathered for meetings at Northgate Business Park to raise awareness about gas well leak concerns in the Crouch Hollow and Rutledge areas twice since March. They’ve made progress, drawing the EPA’s attention. Two agency officials, including Beers, attended the second meeting by Zoom teleconference on May 15.

“I would just like to get this area deemed safe just because of all the abnormalities that have been found throughout the last several months,” former Crouch Hollow Road resident David Bentley said at the May meeting.

Bentley reported surveying 71 area residents in the past eight months about community health issues, spurred by a December 2021 gas leak near his former home. Bentley and other residents have reported skin and eye irritation, shortness of breath, nausea and headaches. While Bentley now lives in Lincoln County, he has remained concerned about potential negative health impacts on his children, ages 12 and 9.

Stout and other residents living near gas wells have reported foul smells coming from them. They say some of the wells are undocumented and have no solvent owner. Wells with no solvent owner are considered orphaned.

“I just know that it should be cleaned up,” Sandra Middleton, 65, of Bench Road, said after the May 15 meeting. “And we shouldn’t have to worry about if we’re going to wake up tomorrow and be miserable.”

Middleton believes gas leaks are behind her onset of severe headaches and coughing in recent years. Her son Daniel, who lives next door on Bench Road, says his 6-year-old son has been in and out of the hospital for the past 2.5 months, enduring unexplained chronic coughing fits and headaches. Daniel’s wife has been fighting migraines in recent months.

“What about our kids?” Daniel Middleton asked after the meeting. “It’s affecting our kids, our life. Who’s going to take responsibility for that?”

Beers said the EPA needs data to connect dots between environmental hazard concerns and adverse health impacts. She encouraged residents to share suspected gas exposure sites with her agency.

The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry would review notes from the May 15 meeting and join the EPA in sending representatives to the next, as-yet-unscheduled community meeting, Beers said. The ATSDR is charged with protecting communities from harmful health effects related to hazardous substances.

Elaine Tanner, Kentucky-based organizer for the community organization group Friends for Environmental Justice, said she would collect health reports from willing residents to share with federal environmental and health agencies.

“I know that there’s environmental studies done for fish and turtles and bats,” Tanner said. “We needed something to be done for the people here.”

Bentley and other residents say the state Department of Environmental Protection has downplayed the environmental health threat from gas wells.

The DEP has backed off an inspector’s initial finding that noted a gas well owned by Diversified Energy Company — less than 4,000 feet away from Bentley’s former home — was leaking and had highly toxic hydrogen sulfide despite a Diversified report there was hydrogen sulfide at the well a day after a complaint from Bentley.

According to DEP email correspondence, Bentley had complained of a rotten egg smell, an odor the National Library of Medicine says is commonly linked to hydrogen sulfide. The colorless gas can be smelled at low levels, which may result in fatigue, headaches, dizziness and poor memory.

“It’s really bad stuff,” said Philip Price, a retired research scientist who worked 33 years for Union Carbide and Dow.

The DEP accepted an analysis from Diversified indicating a lack of hydrogen sulfide at the site 17 days after Bentley’s complaint, saying the odors that Bentley and a DEP inspector smelled were due to other sulfur-containing compounds contained in the gas stream.

The Diversified analysis showed the presence of dimethyl sulfide, a neurotoxicant that also has a foul odor at low concentrations and may cause nausea or vomiting.

Price said the results indicate the potential for a severe odor problem that likely is significantly greater than the potential toxicity.

DEP spokesperson Terry Fletcher said the leak Bentley complained about was corrected by converting a plunger lift system at the well from automatic to manual mode, meaning the well would only be open during biweekly operational responsibilities.

Diversified spokesperson John Sutter said that in March, the well was shut in due to area surface mining and isn’t actively producing gas. A tank was removed from the site, Sutter said.

Fletcher said the DEP has inspected every well of which it’s aware in the Crouch Hollow area, most recently on April 4, and that no gas was detected at any well site. The DEP found that no hydrogen sulfide was being produced at Diversified’s well in February 2023 and that it was functioning properly.

But the growing Crouch Hollow neighborhood concerns have highlighted gaps in local well and national epidemiological data that residents want to see closed.

Heath Coleman believes too much unaccounted-for damage already has been done.

Coleman recalled getting a severe rash on his left leg after weed-eating near a gas well and an odor that made him and his wife so nauseous they had to leave their Crouch Hollow Road property.

Coleman noticed the odors in 2021 soon after buying the property, which he says he invested heavily in developing but now fears is worth much less due to the gas well concerns.

“We’ve got some people exposed to some things that they should never have been exposed to,” Coleman said. “In my opinion, someone kind of needs to answer for that.”

Data gaps ~ A Diversified employee reported a finding of 11 parts per million of hydrogen sulfide at the well on which Bentley based his December 2021 complaint.