Sunday, January 01, 2012

Earthquake in Ohio?

While you may not have been paying attention, people in McDonald, Ohio, had an earthquake on Saturday.
PlainDealer:

The strongest of at least 11 earthquakes to rattle an area near Youngstown in 2011 hit Saturday afternoon....

.....Within an hour of the quake, State Sen. Bob Hagan, Democrat of Youngstown, called for a statewide moratorium on injection wells used in fracking, a procedure in which pressurized fluid is injected into a rock formation to harvest natural gas. 

But Jim Zehringer, the director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, said the earthquakes were likely related to the injection of brine wastewater into the ground near a previously unknown fault line. The wastewater comes from fracking drilling operations....

From USA Today:

...A 4.0 magnitude quake Saturday afternoon in McDonald, outside of Youngstown, was the 11th in a series of minor earthquakes in area, many of which have struck near the Youngstown injection well. The quake caused no serious injuries or property damage, Zehringer said....

....Patti Gorcheff, who lives about 15 miles from the epicenter, said her dogs started barking inexplicably Saturday and the ornaments on her Christmas tree began to shake. Her husband thought he heard the sound of some sort of blast....


...There are 177 similar injection wells around the state, and the Youngstown-area well has been the only site with seismic activity, the department said. Zehringer said that to shut down all of the wells because of seismic activity near one would be an overreaction. 

Jim Zehringer might feel differently if he lived in the immediate area of the Ohio earthquakes. I'm sure Ohioans, especially those in northeastern Ohio, are sooooo glad to have Zehringer explaining the causes of the earthquake. So far, I've not seen any educational background that would explain Zehringer's "expert" opinion on the cause of this seismic activity.  Seems to me that Zehringer is just doing as he has been told by the Kasich administration.

In case you might be interested, Arkansas had a large number of earthquakes from 2010-2011. An NPR report from 2/18/11, had these startling statistics:

There was a 3.2-magnitude earthquake at 6:18 a.m. local time this morning near Greenbrier, Ark., the U.S. Geological Survey reports. That's in the north central part of the state....

...Since Sunday, USGS says, there have been more than 50 earthquakes in that area. And, local station KATV reported yesterday, there have been more than 700 in the past six months.

Will Ohio have a similar number of earthquakes now that the Kasich administration has put down the welcome mat for oil and gas exploration in the state?