Kentucky continues to find and plug hundreds of abandoned oil and gas wells around the state.

Yesterday, lawmakers received an update on the state's progress.

It's estimated there are more than 15,000 of these so-called orphaned wells in the state, with each having the potential for creating environmental hazards.

Kentucky received a $22 million federal grant to clean up these sites.

That's led to more than 600 wells being plugged in.

These 27 counties from Union County and the West to Lawrence County in the east.

Dennis Hatfield is director of Kentucky's Division of Oil and Gas.

He told state lawmakers that inspectors will continue finding wells for quite some time.

I think we have 16 inspectors across the Commonwealth and they go out every day to inspect normal active wells.

And part of that traveling and inspection is to look for orphaned whales.

We received citizen complaints.

A lot of times a farmer will brush, you know, bush hog bottom and find whales and they'll report them to us.

So it comes through citizen reports to inspectors finding them.

And we actually have set up a web, an email address, orphan whales at KUAR, dot gov.

That's out on our website.

And citizens can simply tap into that.

See, I've got a whale here in my back yard.

Come and look at it.

And that's what we do.

So those reports have all total together to help us scope this out.

We haven't found them all yet.

We're not going into places in the least or Powell, the big sinking area.

It's been worked for years before there were laws.

I had an inspector.

Last month was telling me he went out to to confirm the location of one orphaned whale, and he found about nine more.

It's going to continue in the older areas.

This isn't everywhere, but the older oil and gas basins will continue to find them for a while.

Last year, federal estimates suggested nearly 18% of the nation's orphaned wells were in Kentucky.

More than any other state, Kentucky is now in the process of applying for another federal grant that would allow them to continue this work.