Texans angrily protest fracking after 30 earthquakes hit town
Jan 21, 2014 | RT
Dozens of residents from a rural Texas community traveled to the
state capital on Tuesday to demand that regulators act immediately to
ban hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, amidst allegations it’s to blame
for a spate of recent earthquakes.
The Azle, TX area north of Fort Worth has experienced no fewer
than 30 earthquakes since November, and residents say it’s a
result of increased fracking activity.
Fracking, a process of injecting large quantities of a chemical
cocktail into the earth to tap subterranean natural gas reserves,
has long been associated with seismic activity, and researchers
last
year linked drill sites to a series of quakes in parts of
Ohio. Some Azle-area residents now say there’s no doubt that
recent tremors across town have been brought on by similar
operations in the Lone Star State, and on Tuesday they assembled
before the Texas Railroad Commission to demand they action.
Around 50 residents had planned to attend Tuesday’s hearing, but
eyewitnesses at the event estimated that close to 100 fracking
opponents came to complain. The commission, which regulates
mineral energy production in the state of Texas, heard
testimonies from no fewer than two dozen of those critics.
“No disrespect, but this isn’t rocket science here,”
Reno Mayor Lynda Stokes testified during the hearing. “Common
sense tells you the wells are playing a big role in all
this.”
At one point during the hearing, a man who identified himself as
a retired rocket scientist said it doesn’t take someone with his
expertise to see that increased fracking is causing the quakes.
“The correlation of increased fracking wastewater disposal
and increased earthquakes is blindingly obvious,” another
attendee, Sharon Wilson of the Earthworks Oil and Gas
Accountability Project, told the commission.
“If Texas regulators want to show that they’re not owned by
the oil and gas industry,” Wilson said, they can “act
now, study later.”
When Wilson later on read to the commission her requests, the
crowd erupted in applause.
“We have three things that we’d like to ask for,” Wilson
said. “We’d like to ask for wastewater injection to halt
until the science exists to prevent related earthquakes; we’d
like all seismic data collected to be publically available online
and in real time; [and] we’d like those responsible for the
injection wells to be held presumptively liable for damages
caused earthquakes in the area.”
Larry Griffith of Briar, TX told the commission that his mobile
home is roughly five miles away from the nearest fracking site
but has felt the quakes nonetheless.
“I was standing in my house and it felt like a big truck hit
the struck of the side of the house,” he said.
“You’re putting a layer of water underneath an open hole
that’s causing the ground to be unstable. Who’s to say it’s not
going to collapse and cause tremors?” Griffith asked.
Geologist Billy Caldwell told WFAA News ahead of the hearing that
he has spent more than 50 years evaluating wells within the state
for the oil and gas industry, and estimated that the big wigs
involved in fracking drills wouldn’t be happy with his research.
“Caldwell said there are three small fault lines directly
northwest of Azle,” the station reported. “He thinks it
is likely that water being injected back into the earth at
fracking disposal sites is leaking into these fault planes.”
“That causes slippage, and that causes the earthquakes,"
Caldwell told WFAA.
Todd Unger at WFAA reported that the commissions claims they are
in the process of looking for a seismologist to examine local
drill sites, but the group has already determined that at least
one of the injection drills has had issues.
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