LONGVIEW, Texas — The oil industry has given Texas families a good living. Those high-paying jobs and the black gold workers extracted from the earth were at the center of the region’s economy for decades.

Oil has been big business here for nearly 100 years, and thousands upon thousands of older oil wells have long since dried up.

The holes that reach deep into the ground have been plugged with cement to prevent cancer-causing gasses, toxic saltwater and crude oil from rising to the surface – or contaminating groundwater supplies below. But what happens when those plugs fail?

Read more from our news partners, the Longview News-Journal.

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