In this June 9 photo, an oil-and-gas well pad and ...

Photo by Associated Press | published: June 17, 2014

In this June 9 photo, an oil-and-gas well pad and storage tanks sit below a home in a sparsely populated area near New Castle, Colo., a small farming and ranching settlement on the Western Slope of the Rockies. Four in 10 new oil and gas wells near national forests and fragile watersheds or otherwise identified as higher pollution risks escape federal inspection, according to an Associated Press review that shows wide state-by-state disparities in safety checks.