The six people responsible for inspecting the 23,000 oil and gas wells in the San Juan Basin meet early every morning to talk about what they did the day before.

Typical days include witnessing well pluggings, meeting with tribal environmental agencies and monitoring the cleanup of oil and gas "releases."

Sometimes witnessing a process can eat up an inspector's whole day.

Other times, inspectors spend the day in their vehicles, roving over the thousands of miles of roads that lie like a web across the oil and gas fields.

The field office of choice in the industry towns of Farmington, Aztec and Bloomfield is the white crew-cab pickup.

These mud-splattered four-wheel drives fly blaze-orange flags from tall antennae to warn other trucks they are coming across on the hilly roads that dissect the sagebrush.

There are 18 inspectors in three districts in the state responsible for monitoring the 99,000 active and abandoned wells in New Mexico.

Charlie Perrin, district supervisor for the state's Aztec office, said it's hard to keep his office staffed.

"State salaries (from $12 to $23 per hour, depending on experience and education) make it hard to keep inspectors," Perrin said. Oil industry jobs pay more but have less stability, Perrin said.

Several of Perrin's staff members are just learning the job.

Henry Villanueva, 64, is one of the more experienced members of Perrin's team. He became a well inspector 10 years ago after 28 years of working in the oil and gas fields for a company called Slumber J. "In this area, nearly everyone is involved in the industry in one way or another," he said.

These days, Villanueva witnesses a lot of "plug-ins" — the closing of spent wells. It's time-consuming and involves a lot of paperwork. He prefers being out in the field, in his truck, which is outfitted with a Global Positioning System and laptop computer where he can enter notes.

Villanueva looks for stains on the ground, dead vegetation, leaks, spills, fumes and "anything that isn't up to our regulations" when he inspects wells.

He said if the wells are closely spaced (as they are in much of San Juan County), he can inspect 30 to 70 wells per day.

Perrin said his staff tries to inspect each of the 24,000 active wells in his district every five years.

Producing wells are automated, so there are no workers there when inspectors visit. But Villanueva does cross paths with the drivers of the pumper trucks that collect the salty "produced water" that is a byproduct of oil and gas production.

Villanueva said more releases happen (at least one per day) in the winter, when pipes freeze and open waste pits or tanks overflow — either because they fill up with rain or snow or because the pumper trucks can't navigate the muddy roads to empty the tanks.

Villanueva said some of the people whose work he's tasked with monitoring stop their trucks to chat with him about the roads or the weather. Others treat him like a cop.

"When they see you coming, some will come up and talk to you real nice," Villanueva said. "Others have tendency to disappear."

After 28 years as an oil field worker and 10 years as an inspector, this grandfather of four has a lot of stories.

There's one about a little girl who died trying to ride a pumpjack; and one about a pumper truck that discharged its contents right into the San Juan. "I don't know if they ever proved who did it or not," he said. That happened about six or seven years ago.

And then there's the one about a Farmington family that heated its home with natural gas leaking out of an abandoned well located in a closet. He said the well ended up in the closet after the original owners sold the house and the new owners, not knowing about the well, built an addition around it.

Villanueva said the state cleans up "orphan" wells that are abandoned when the operator dies, goes bankrupt or "finds a legal way to get out from under them." He said it would be "a fair statement" to say there are a lot of abandoned wells.

The cleanup and plugging of abandoned wells is paid for out of a fund created from a tax on the oil industry.

"Years ago, you could plug a well for $5,000, but the price has gone up," he said. Villanueva said it cost $71,000 to plug the well that was inside the closet in Farmington.

Businesses along Farmington's main streets sell backhoes, pressure tanks and steel pipes. Dipping and bowing pumpjacks and clusters of storage tanks are commonplace on the city's outskirts.

Villanueva said there isn't much discussion about the right and wrong of oil and gas drilling there.

"It's become a way of life," he said. "The people that complain are the ones that don't benefit from it. The ones that come in and buy the land, I can understand their point. I have nine acres and I'd hate for somebody to come drill a well in the middle of it. It uses up quite a bit of land."

Villanueva said complaints from landowners about downed fences, dead livestock and heavy traffic are a top priority.

Perrin said his staff also tries to respond to residents' complaints about noise or smells but said it's difficult to do everything because of limited funding.

Funding for the Oil Conservation Division was cut by $302,000 during the most recent legislative session.

The division staff and others, including Gov. Bill Richardson, have suggested the cuts were retaliation for the tougher environmental regulations proposed by the division.

"The public wants us to do our jobs. But our hands are tied with political things," Perrin said. "There's not enough money, not enough trucks; gas is too expensive."

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com.