Choosing Test Sites in Aztec, New Mexico. Photopaper, Hydrogen Sulfide Sensing July 2012

After speaking with Josh at San Juan Citizens Alliance. It was decided that the easiest place to get to test sites is in the Aztec area.

After figuring out how to read the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) map, and corresponding spreadsheet. I narrow the wells in that area down to two categories.

One group are the wells where the leases belong to the state and one group are the wells that have been documented once as releasing over 100ppm H2S. There is only on well on state land that has been documented as releasing over 100ppm.

In group one there are 12 wells, only 3 are listed as producing, the rest are [blank], not sure what this means.

In group two there are 11 wells, the spreadsheet only specifies that 6 are producing, but some are listed as shut-in, P&A and [blank]. Not sure what this listings mean?

The BLM maps are sectioned off into range, township and section. The smallest of those is section, which is about a 1 mile square. From this information I translated the section data into latitude and longitude coordinates at the website http://www.earthpoint.us/TownshipsSearchByDescription.aspx

From the spreadsheet we had, I was able to find the latitude and longitude coordinates for the center points of each section, as well as the coordinates for the corner points. I plugged them into Google maps and marked them in order to created the map you see.

The cool thing is as soon as you search for the coordinates of the centroid, on Google Earth, you can see the wells the road names ect. Because there is NOTHING else there.

We finally choose to test at wells 423-425. These wells are on BLM land.

Although there are about 10 wells in the section, I don't think it will be that hard to find the ones we want.

The caption on the excel screenshot should read. Sample of spreadsheet receive from San Juan Citizens Alliance. Shows all wells in desired area where > H2S levels have been recorded at one point