OHIO Department of Natural Resources ignores the public health

From an Article by Julie Grant, The Allegheny Front, February 22, 2021

Judy Burger of Belmont County, Ohio stands next to her home, where across the road two frack waste injection wells are being constructed. She fears noise and pollution from constant truck traffic.

Each well drilled using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for oil and gas production creates tens of millions of gallons of wastewater, called produced water or brine. In Ohio, much of that wastewater is disposed of in underground injection wells, including waste from Pennsylvania and West Virginia. As the number of injection wells grows in Ohio, local communities want some control over where these wells are located.

In Belmont County, Ohio, Judy Burger’s husband is getting ready to retire. After 25 years, their peaceful home near the highway is quickly changing, “I’m a nervous wreck, I’m on blood pressure medicine,” she said. “I have my Venetian blinds closed in my house so I don’t have to look across the street to see the mayhem and the destruction and the coming reality.”

Across the street, OMNI Energy Group of New Jersey has been drilling two frack waste injection wells. Heavy construction equipment has torn up the ground, and some days loud drilling noises remind her of what’s coming.

When the work is done, wastewater from oil and gas operations in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania will be trucked here. According to a state transportation study, 48 trucks will enter and exit the site during peak hours in the morning and afternoon to inject waste into the wells, a salty brine that the US EPA says can be toxic and radioactive.

Burger doesn’t want to live here anymore, and she doubts anyone else would either. “It’s beyond description, how horrible it is to feel like you’re stuck. We were told we have no property value,” she said. “Nobody would buy our property.

“We’ve got the township trustees don’t want it. We’ve got the county commissioners don’t want it. We’ve got the state rep don’t want it. We’ve got the locals that don’t want it,” said Republican State Senator Frank Hoagland, who represents the area. “And I myself put in a letter saying we don’t need it there.”

Hoagland has also gone directly to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the ODNR, which has regulatory authority over the oil and gas industry. “I asked the director of ODNR, I said, ‘So you’ve got everybody saying ‘no’, but you guys are going to authorize it anyways?’ And the director flat out said, ‘if it fits within the ORC [Ohio Revised Code], we have to allow it to happen. We have to give them the permit,’” he recalled.

In an email, the ODNR spokesperson Stephanie O’Grady said basically the same thing. If an applicant can meet the terms and conditions to prevent risks to public health, safety and the environment, she said, “The Chief shall issue the permit.”

In the case of OMNI Energy, local residents wrote letters to the ODNR, according to the agency, with concerns about truck traffic, and idling, the noise, and the proximity to homes and schools.

When the pandemic hit, the ODNR attempted to delay a decision until it could hold a public hearing in person. But OMNI sued to force permit decisions for both wells; a public hearing is not required by law. The Ohio Supreme Court sided with OMNI, requiring the agency to deny or approve the permits. The ODNR approved two permits late last year.

Company and industry supporters say wells are safe, necessary

The drilling sound will subside after construction is completed, according to Chris Gagin, attorney for OMNI Energy. This site is near the Interstate 70 and other major roadways, and the ONDR inspectors found that “the initial drilling activities did not materially increase the surrounding ambient noise levels from the surrounding traffic noise,” Gagin said in an email. “It is literally that loud on a normal basis in that area.”

He said OMNI is setting up the site to reduce the impact of trucks on the community, and the design of the wells will be what he calls “industry leading,” to prevent groundwater contamination and surface leaks.

Ed Mowrer, manager of the Energy Institute at nearby Belmont College, has seen the county benefit from the oil and gas industry. “The eleven new hotels, the fourteen hundred new hotel rooms,” he pointed out. “All the employment, whether it’s an HVAC dealer, and installing those air conditioning units in the hotels, or to the people that receive money through leasing.”

Mowrer understands why nearby residents are concerned about truck traffic, but he said that injection wells are a necessary part of energy development, since the waste it produces has to go someplace. “Disposal wells are a fact of the oil and gas industry,” he said.

Ohio injection wells dispose of more than Ohio gas wells produce

But nearly half of the more than 38 million barrels (1.6 billion gallons) of waste injected in Ohio disposal wells in 2017 came from West Virginia and Pennsylvania, according to the ODNR.

“So somewhere there was a decoupling of what’s generated in Ohio and what Ohio is disposing of, which means that we are more and more taking in a higher percentage of other people’s stuff,” said Ted Auch of the nonprofit Fractracker Alliance.

One reason Ohio takes waste from Pennsylvania: It has many more disposal wells. According to the ODNR, Ohio has 226 wells authorized to inject frack waste. Pennsylvania has 16, according to US EPA, which regulates injection wells in Pennsylvania.

Ohio meanwhile has primacy to regulate injection wells. In 1983, decades before the modern shale industry, the federal government granted the state regulatory authority.

Auch and others concerned about injection wells think it might be time to reconsider Ohio’s primacy. “Primacy is a special thing. You should have to demonstrate all the time that you’re worthy of that as a state, and the state of Ohio has not done that,” Auch said. “The levels of money and labor that they’ve had in that program over time have not kept pace with the amount of activity they’ve been charged with overseeing.”

Still, in 2015, the US EPA found that Ohio was running a “good quality program,” praising the agency for dealing with the potential for earthquakes caused by injection wells, while still recommending stronger enforcement for operators with repeat violations.

In recent years, as more injection wells are permitted, there have been problems. In 2019, brine injected into one well in Washington County migrated into producing oil and gas wells five miles a way. And just this month, an old gas well started spewing brine for days into the environment, killing fish. Brine is suspected to have come from nearby injection wells. According the state, there have been 65 spills of oil and gas related brine in the past three years. Eleven of those happened in Belmont County, where OMNI Energy is building its injection wells.

Senator Hoagland said he does not want Ohio to give up its authority over injection wells to the federal government. “I’d much rather say, ‘Hey, look, if we’ve got the state legislators, the local leadership to include the township leadership saying hell, no, we don’t want this,’ well to me that should be good enough,” he said.

The ODNR could do more to work with local communities on siting decisions, Hoagland said. He and other local leaders are looking at ways to change state law to encourage that.

Fracking wastewater (“brine”) is mainly transported by tanker trucks

From an Article by Kate Mishkin, HD Media, May 12,2019

State and federal regulators are skirting their obligations to protect West Virginia’s drinking water from the effects of fracking, a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council says.

The report, made public this week, examines the way the state Department of Environmental Protection regulates oil and gas underground injection activities, and how hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, can threaten underground drinking water if operators aren’t held accountable.

By examining records from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, the group detailed the times the state was inconsistent in its reporting, and found it often sidestepped the state underground injection control program, and federal Safe Drinking Water Act requirements.

In some cases, companies submitted reports that said they’d been injecting wastewater under an expired permit, and that wells had been abandoned without being plugged.

Companies extract natural gas by shooting water, chemicals and sand at a high pressure into wells, often generating large amounts of wastewater, which can contain contaminants such as radiation and heavy metals. Companies often dispose of the large quantities of wastewater by injecting it underground.

And as companies continue to tap into the sprawling Marcellus Shale, the amount of wastewater injected grows, too – “exacerbating the need for safe waste-management practices,” the report says.

“It is crucial that underground injection be properly designed, constructed, operated and maintained – and eventually plugged and abandoned – to ensure that they do not threaten underground sources of drinking water protected by federal and state statutes,” the report says.

In many cases, though, the state DEP allowed companies to inject without a permit, continue to operate without applying for a renewal permit before the permit expired and continuing to inject after the DEP issued an order stopping it.

The wells, the report says, “reveal a pattern of unsafe practices and lax enforcement over the years. Any improperly operated well has the potential to cause environmental problems, and potential violations should be taken seriously.”

There are currently three active disposal wells that have received Notices of Violations but haven’t been abated, said Terry Fletcher, a spokesman for the DEP. Of those, two have been abated but aren’t in the department’s database; one well isn’t injecting.

“The WVDEP acknowledges that abandoned and unplugged wells are a legitimate issue and has been working with well operators and others within the industry to find viable solutions to this issue,” Fletcher said.

He said the DEP hasn’t logged any incidents of groundwater contamination from a UIC disposal well.

The EPA declined to answer questions about the report.
“Until we’ve had a chance to read it, it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment,” a spokeswoman for the EPA said.

Amy Mall, senior policy analyst for the NRDC, said some of the failure comes from a lack of accountability. “I think there’s a combination of the fact that a lot of these sites are in rural areas, companies may think nobody’s watching them [and] nobody’s going to find out if they don’t fully comply with the law,” she said.

And in many cases, companies don’t have a reason to be deterred from breaking rules, Mall said. “Companies don’t have the incentive to comply with the law unless there’s strict enforcement and penalties, otherwise there’s no incentive for them to comply,” she said.

The report recommends the DEP establish stronger operating standards, enforce its rules and be more transparent. It asks the federal Environmental Protection Agency to enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act in the state.

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REFERENCE: West Virginia’s Groundwater Is Not Adequately Protected from Underground Injection, Amy Mall, NRDC, April 30, 2019

SUMMARY — This paper provides an overview of how the Safe Drinking Water Act’s Underground Injection Control program regulates oil and gas underground injection activities. It then examines aspects of the program that are out of date and ine ective at meeting the statutory goal of protecting underground sources of drinking water. In particular, the paper analyzes the status of the underground injection control program in West Virginia, where the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has failed to incorporate any state requirements under EPA authority for federal enforcement. The paper also provides recommendations for improvements in the policies of both the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and the EPA.

Lochgelly Injection Well Sediment Pits

Lochgelly Frack Waste Injection Well Site Worries Residents in the Fayette Plateau

From Keely Kernan, Into the Hills & Hollows, September 10, 2014

Below are images from a short film about an injection well site that is owned and operated by Danny Webb Construction, located in Lochgelly, WV. The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) gave Danny Webb a class II injection well permit in 2002. The permit allows for the dumping of waste from oil and natural gas industries. The creek located next to the site is the headwaters of Wolf Creek which leads directly into the New River, upstream from the current water intake for the surround areas.

The film exposed years of violations at the site and the West Virginia DEP’s failure to enforce regulations that would protect public health. In 2007, resident Brad Keenan presented evidence to the West Virginia DEP that toxic and radioactive waste was polluting Wolf Creek. The footage in the film was captured seven years later and features residents Brad Keenan, Mary Rahall, former employee Peter Halverson, and restaurant owner Wendy Bays.

The film is part of a series about resource extraction throughout West Virginia called “In the Hills and Hollows” and is sponsored by the Civil Society Institute and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

Check out “Frack Waste Injection and Concerned Residents” by In the Hills and Hollows on Vimeo. The video is available for your viewing pleasure at http://vimeo.com/105513941

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West Virginia DEP disregards common sense

Letter to Editor by Barbara Daniels (Richwood), Charleston Gazette, November 15, 2014:

The following situation in Fayette County exemplifies the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s disregard for common-sense rules of health and safety. There are others, but this one has been studied by Duke University and the U.S. Geological Survey. These scientists found high levels of endocrine-disruptors and frack-fingerprint chemicals in affected water sources.

Since before 2007, Pennsylvania has been sending frack waste-water, too radioactive to be economically disposed of under Pennsylvania laws, to a dump in Lochgelly, West Virginia. Also containing diesel, plus toxic chemicals, this material was found to be leaking into a creek above the primary water intake for Oak Hill, Fayetteville and Lochgelly.

Yet, despite public outcry, the Office of Oil Gas allowed the dump operator to cover the leaking waste-sludge-pit with a liner without first removing the sludge, and continued to renew the dump’s permit until 2013. Although being issued numerous violations, the dump owner was then issued a “consent decree” and, although exceeding its permitted 1.5 million-gallon capacity, the facility is still operating (for video, go to dirtysecretwater.com)

The DEP is, further, covering up an intractable problem with hydrofracturing. The hundreds of millions of gallons of frack-waste brine generated daily are exceptionally radioactive, according to EPA and USGS studies. They also contain endocrine disrupters and a chemical known as 4NQO, which is highly carcinogenic in parts per trillion. This waste has nowhere safe to go. Yet, on PBS, NPR and before the Legislature, the DEP stated that radioactivity in frack waste is a non-issue in West Virginia and failed to mention the chemical contaminants at all.

The DEP also testified before the state House Rules Committee this summer that leachate from West Virginia landfills where frack drill-cuttings are being placed has not shown radioactivity above background level. However, these findings can’t be checked, since the Department of Homeland Security tests for the DEP and is not required to disclose its methods.

Now, in a November 1st local FM broadcast, spokespeople for the state Division of Highways reported that they will be using hydrofracturing brine to de-ice West Virginia roads. Overseen by the WV-DEP, these Highways officials assured us that such toxin-laden, radioactive waste “is just salt water.”

Lochgelly Pond Photo

Shale Drilling Destroys Ohio Regional Water Resources

Press Release, FreshWater Accountability Project (www.FWAP.org), September 2014

Ohioans are beginning to realize that unconventional shale drilling uses a great deal of water, permanently ruining it for other uses.  But what they may not know is fracked gas and oil wells in Ohio are turning out to be less productive over time, with more water needed so the effects of water usage are rising. Now, each time a Utica well is fracked in Ohio, over seven million gallons of water is needed on average per well. This volume of water needed is steadily increasing as the long drilled laterals increase in length. As more and more water becomes necessary per unit of gas or oil produced, the cumulative effects are being seen. Very little water is recycled by the industry for re-use; most fracked water is lost to the watershed and beyond forever as it is turned into concentrated toxic and radioactive waste.

The numbers are staggering. With only 691 of the wells issued drilling permits by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) fracked so far and many more permitted and projected, the water loss to the Ohio River basin is expected to be 18.5 billion gallons in the next 5 years. There are few regulatory protections for the water in Ohio. ODNR requires only reporting of water withdrawals; the agency does not assess the effects of the loss of water, and so does not intervene to protect from environmental and public health impacts of this level of water consumption or contamination by industry waste.

The industry also tends to underestimates water usage in its reporting to the ODNR. For instance, in Harrison County, the actual amount used for fracking was over 700 million gallons compared to the estimated 588 million gallons.  As of 9-6-14 there were 50 wells being drilled, 63 wells drilled, and 82 more wells permitted, so water usage will more than double in Harrison county.

Harrison is not the worst county. In Noble County, over 200 million gallons were used in just one year. There are still 53 permits for just one driller awaiting approval in this same county.  A single well used 22,139,168 gallons of water to frack.

Paul Rubin, a New York hydrogeologist and environmental consultant warns, “Public waters should not be provided to the gas industry.  The concept that this is a ‘beneficial use’ of these waters is seriously flawed.  Any use of public waters that will assuredly lead to the long-term contamination of the state’s aquifers, waterways, and reservoirs and should not be advocated in any way whatsoever. Public health is a major and very real concern.” Rubin’s warnings are supported by depictions of migratory pathways of frack fluids intersecting with groundwater flows. These figures show that groundwater and gas industry contaminants steadily move toward our major aquifers and water supplies, often well below thousands of feed of bedrock.

Steady migration of toxic fracking and wastewater fluids from gas and injection wells threaten groundwater and surface water as well, especially those directly under reservoirs and valley bottoms where major population centers have developed. Reservoirs such as Clendening, Leesville, Piedmont and Seneca Lakes leased for fracking by the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) and proposed fracking under the Ohio River could cause widespread toxic contamination of public drinking water sources over time – not only with toxic chemicals and radioactivity, but from the concentrated salts contained in frack waste.

The impact is cumulative as the frack waste disposal problem grows. So far, 221,732,322 gallons of frack waste generated from within Ohio and 191,299,374 gallons from out of state have been disposed of, making a total of 413,031,696 gallons of toxic and radioactive frack waste that has been injected into Ohio’s underground geology.  Toxins within these fluids will contaminate the water we and our grandchildren require far into the future.

Concerns that some of this toxic waste from fracking and injection wells will migrate into groundwater and surface waters used for drinking water are well founded. Just recently, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection released information documenting 243 cases of water well contamination caused by fracking with many others still under investigation.

Whether from leaking gas wells due to faulty casings or fracking itself, facts are the process of horizontal hydrofracking does cause water contamination. The public should not be confused by semantics in published reports potentially intended to mislead by differentiating only the moment of fracking itself that causes the pollution.

A recent peer-reviewed report stated, “Noble gas isotope and hydrocarbon data link four contamination clusters to gas leakage from intermediate-depth strata through failures of annulus cement, three to target production gases that seem to implicate faulty production casings, and one to an underground gas well failure.” Another report concluded, “Even in a best-case scenario, an individual well would potentially release at least 200 cubic meters of contaminated fluids.”

According to Ted Auch, PhD, FracTracker Ohio Program Coordinator, “What we are seeing already is a trend that can result in devastating impacts upon entire watersheds. First, already fragile ecosystems will be impacted very detrimentally, and if this trend continues according to the projections of the fracking deployment in Ohio, human and other industries’ needs for water will most likely be severely affected. We predict a regional water crisis at this rate of destruction.”

Freshwater usage is increasing. According to Dr. Auch, “The increase in lateral length accounts for 40% of the increase in freshwater consumption, so now freshwater is up from 4.88 million gallons average per Utica well fracked to 7.27 million gallons today. Additional water is used to increase well production. As water use goes up, the cost of this valuable resource consumed by fracking is a very small fraction of the cost of the entire fracking operation. Water is a cheap way to increase well production – a disposable commodity used by the industry without constraint that in no way reflects its real worth.”

There is a very limited, finite amount of freshwater on earth and not enough of it to be destroyed in such quantities. Lea Harper, Managing Director of FreshWater Accountability Project (www.FWAP.org) continues to track the changes to the waterways in Southeast Ohio as the impacts from frack. The cumulative effect of degraded water resources because of such extreme loss of water to a watershed can be projected from what we see already. Pipelines are proposed to withdraw from reservoirs and the Ohio River to extract millions of gallons of freshwater every day for fracking. Plus the remaining water is under threat from future contamination due to leaking wells, chemical migration in groundwater, spills and deliberate dumping by the industry. Unless action is taken now to protect Ohio’s valuable freshwater supplies, costs will go up, and people will get sick. This is already occurring in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

Toledo Attorney Terry Lodge added: “What we are seeing already is a trend that can devastate entire watersheds in Ohio and elsewhere. If fracking continues as projected, all other uses for water – for industry, agriculture, support of life – will likely be harmed. What people may not realize is that fracking destroys water for good. Billions and billions of gallons of clean freshwater removed from the water cycle forever and turned into contaminated waste. Remaining water can be poisoned beyond any ability to remediate.”

“This water can never be replaced. When it’s gone, it’s gone for good.”

New research indicates that wastewater disposal wells—and sometimes fracking itself—can induce earthquakes

From Sharon Wilson, EARTHWORKS’ Oil and Gas Accountability Project, May 3, 2014
 
Ohio regulators did something last month that had never been done before: they drew a tentative link between shale gas fracking and an increase in local earthquakes. As fracking has grown in the U.S., so have the number of earthquakes—there were more than 100 recorded quakes of magnitude 3.0 or larger each year between 2010 and 2013, compared to an average of 21 per year over the preceding three decades. That includes a sudden increase in seismic activity in usually calm states like Kansas, Oklahoma and Ohio—states that have also seen a rapid increase in oil and gas development. Shale gas and oil development is still growing rapidly—more than eightfold between 2007 and 2012—but if fracking and drilling can lead to dangerous quakes, America’s homegrown energy revolution might be in for an early end.

But seismologists are only now beginning to grapple with the connection between oil and gas development and earthquakes. New research being presented at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America this week shows that wastewater disposal wells—deep holes drilled to hold hundreds of millions of gallons of fluid produced by oil and gas wells—may be changing the stress on existing faults, inducing earthquakes that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Those quakes can occur tens of miles away from the wells themselves, further than scientists had previously believed. And they can be large as well—researchers have now linked two quakes in 2011 with a magnitude greater than 5.0 to wastewater wells.

“This demonstrates there is a significant hazard,” said Justin Rubinstein, a research geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey. “We need to address ongoing seismicity.”

Rubinstein was speaking on a teleconference call with three other seismologists who have been researching how oil and gas development might be able to induce quakes. All of them noted that the vast majority of wastewater disposal sites and oil and gas wells weren’t connected to increased quake activity—which is a good thing, since there are more than 30,000 disposal wells alone scattered around the country. But scientists are still trying to figure out which wells might be capable of inducing strong quakes, though the sheer volume of fluid injected into the ground seems to be the driving factor (that’s one reason why hydraulic fracturing itself rarely seems to induce quakes—around 5 million gallons, or 18.9 million L, of fluid is used in fracking, far less than the amount of fluid that ends up in a disposal well).

“There are so many injection operations throughout much of the U.S. now that even though a small fraction might induce quakes, those quakes have contributed dramatically to the seismic hazard, especially east of the Rockies,” said Arthur McGarr, a USGS scientist working on the subject.

What scientists need to do is understand that seismic hazard—especially if oil and gas development in one area might be capable of inducing quakes that could overwhelm structures that were built for a lower quake risk. That’s especially important given that fracking is taking place in many parts of the country—like Oklahoma or Ohio—that haven’t had much experience with earthquakes, and where both buildings and people likely have a low tolerance to temblors. Right now there’s very little regulation regarding how oil and gas development activities should be adjusted to reduce quake risk—and too little data on the danger altogether.

“There’s a very large gap on policy here,” says Gail Atkinson, a seismologist at the University of Western Ontario. “We need extensive databases on the wells that induce seismicity and the ones that don’t.”

So far the quakes that seem to have been induced by oil and gas activity have shaken up people who live near wells, but haven’t yet caused a lot of damage. But that could change if fracking and drilling move to a part of the country that already has clear existing seismic risks—like California, which has an estimated 15 billion barrels of oil in the Monterey Shale formation that could only be accessed through fracking (limited fracking has been done in California, but only in the lightly populated center of the state). Environmentalists who seek to block shale oil development in the Golden State have seized on fears of fracking-induced quakes, and a bill in the state legislature would establish a moratorium on fracking until research shows it can be done safely.

Regulation is slowly beginning to catch up. In Ohio, officials this month established new guidelines that would allow regulators to halt active hydraulic fracturing if seismic monitors detect a quake with a magnitude of 1.0 or higher. But it will ultimately be up to the oil and gas industry to figure out a way to carry out development without making the earth shake.

“I am confident that it is only a matter of time before we figure out how to exercise these technologies in a way that avoids significant quakes,” says Atkinson. Otherwise the fracking revolution may turn out to be short-lived.
 
=== EARTHWORKS:  Protecting Communities and the Environment
 

Earthquakes in Mahoning County, OH

Did Fracking Cause All Four Earthquakes in Ohio?

From an Article by Brandon Baker, EcoWatch.com, March 12, 2014

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) has ordered Texas-based energy company Hilcorp to halt all fracking operations in Mahoning County after at least four earthquakes shook the area on Monday.

A magnitude 3.0 earthquake at 2:26 a.m. and a magnitude 2.6 at 11:45 a.m. on March 10 were among those reported in Poland Township just south of Youngstown near a fracking site with seven drilling wells, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

“It’s an area which (before 2011) had no history of earthquakes,” John Armbruster, a retired Columbia University geology professor, told the Columbus Dispatch. “It looks very, very suspicious.”

Ohio Department of Natural Resources personnel say earthquakes near Youngstown are not related to injection wells, but some have a different opinion.

The ODNR has stressed that the order to suspend drilling was precautionary and that the earthquakes were not related to fracking waste-injection wells which were tied to severe earthquakes near Youngstown in 2011. Armbruster monitored those wells along with Ohio officials.

“We are in the process of analyzing the data,” Mark Bruce, an ODNR spokesman, said in a statement. ”All available information indicates the events are not connected to Class II injection activities.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we notified the only oil and gas operator in the area and ordered them to halt all operations until further assessment can take place.”

However, Dr. Ray Beiersdorfer of Youngstown State University has issued an open letter suggesting that the epicenters of the quakes are even closer to the fracking site than originally reported. “Simply put, the longitude, latitude and depth of the shale well laterals are within a few thousand feet from the epicenters of the earthquakes,” he wrote. He also questions the state and Hilcorp’s swift denial that the temblors are related to the injection wells.

“Reading between the lines both the regulator and company seem to be implying that by, ruling out injection induced seismicity this somehow rules out other forms of human-induced seismicity, such as the fracking that was going on at the same time and same location as the earthquakes,” he wrote.

“I find ODNR’s focus on injection-induced seismicity as a bit ironic, since as recently as 2011 these regulator were avidly denying injection-induced seismicity in Youngstown, even after we suffered eight regional-size earthquakes. Research—known at the time—concluded that the earthquakes were induced by frackwaste disposal wells.”

ODNR has not provided any more information since its halting order earlier this year. Radioactive fracking wastewater has been coming to Ohio for disposal since 2011, when neighboring Pennsylvania ordered oil and gas companies to stop dumping fracking wastewater into the state’s streams and rivers.

In 2012, more than 14 million barrels of toxic waste from oil and gas drilling were injected into the ground in Ohio’s Class II disposal wells, with 8.16 million barrels of waste from other states. Wastewater injection wells pose a series of threats to public health and the environment, including groundwater contamination.

Visit EcoWatch’s FRACKING page for this and related news.

Earthquake: 12-16-13

From the Posting by Michael Janitch on December 16, 2013

Kansas, which not normally very seismically active, is showing signs of the surrounding pressure building in Oklahoma and Texas.

On December 16th 2013, a 4.2 magnitude event struck directly near a KANSAS injection well.  This current earthquake falling across the border from Oklahoma, happening just 0.3 miles away from the nearest well head.

For Kansas (and the midwest USA), this is noteworthy. Now we’ve seen movement across the ENTIRE craton edge. (The “craton” is the border of the bedrock  [basement rock] of the major portion of North America, along the west and south.)

The movement  began on the West Coast (5.5M off the coast of Oregon on December 2), followed by an earthquake swarm in Oklahoma / Texas (December 5th – 7th), followed by a Yellowstone earthquake swarm (December 9), followed by a fracking earthquake at the Colorado New Mexico border (December 10th) , followed by a Eastern Craton edge earthquake at the Tennessee Georgia border (December 10th), followed by a Northeast Craton edge quake in Southeast Canada  (December 11th), finally followed by this Kansas 4.2M event today (December 16th).

Be prepared for additional movement in nearby adjacent areas, near term.

Click to view full size:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000llhu#summary

Location

37.124°N 97.781°W depth=5.0km (3.1mi)

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Here are all the  past “sincedutch” posts on the topic of fracking induced earthquakes:

http://sincedutch.wordpress.com/?s=frack&submit=Search

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This was expected to occur, read this post here (watch the video) to see why it was expected.

Oklahoma / Texas fracking earthquake swarm (December 2013):

http://sincedutch.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/1272013-oklahoma-4-5m-fracking-earthquake-one-well-surrounded-by-several-quakes/

Yellowstone earthquake swarm (December 2013):

http://sincedutch.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/1272013-oklahoma-4-5m-fracking-earthquake-one-well-surrounded-by-several-quakes/
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