Nine earthquakes have been recorded in an area near Youngstown, Ohio, between March and November of this year. All have been mild, but the quakes didn’t begin until a drilling company began injecting waste water from hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) into a nearby disposal well.
According to a report from Bloomberg, a geologist at Youngstown State University “ said that though the quakes’ timing and location suggest wells may be to blame, more data is needed.” The president and CEO of the drilling company told Bloomberg that “if these things weren’t safe, we would not put them in.”
The Ohio quakes are not the first to be linked at least in the public mind with the practice of re-injecting waste water from fracking back into abandoned wells. A flurry of earthquakes hit an area in the Haynesville shale gas play in Arkansas, and injection wells near the Dallas-Fort Worth area were closed following similar quakes there.
The National Academy of Sciences is preparing a report on seismic activity near fracking sites for release sometime next year.
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