From NBC News: thank you Victor
Before January 2011, Youngstown, Ohio, which is located on the Marcellus Shale, had never experienced an earthquake, at least not since researchers began observations in 1776. However, in December 2010, the Northstar 1 injection well came online to pump wastewater from fracking projects in Pennsylvania into storage deep underground. In the year that followed, seismometers in and around Youngstown recorded 109 earthquakes, the strongest registering a magnitude-3.9 earthquake on Dec. 31, 2011. The well was shut down after the quake.
Fracking triggered more than 100 earthquakes in Ohio
...The new investigation of the Youngstown earthquakes, detailed in the July issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, reveals that their onset, end and even temporary dips in activity were apparently all tied to activity at the Northstar 1 well.For instance, the first earthquake recorded in Youngstown occurred 13 days after pumping began, and the tremors ceased shortly after the Ohio Department of Natural Resources shut down the well in December 2011. In addition, dips in earthquake activity lined up with Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and other times when injection at the well was temporarily stopped.
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Common Cause Ohio study of contributions, lobbying by fracking industry suggests more reporting requirements needed
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- As Ohio’s natural gas industry has boomed, so have contributions to politicians from that industry, a study by Common Cause Ohio found.
The study showed companies in the natural gas industry and those engaged in hydraulic fracturing, a process commonly called fracking that frees gas from the earth, gave more than $1.8 million to Ohio elected officials, candidates and political parties from July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2013.
That, coupled with a lack of reporting requirements for compensation paid to political lobbyists should raise questions with voters about transparency and just who has access to government, said Catherine Turcer, a policy analyst for Common Cause Ohio, an advocacy organization that promotes government accountability.
A home close to the edge of South Boulder Creek in Eldorado Springs, Colorado.
Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images
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Flooding and Fracking in Colorado: Double Disaster
Serious flooding threatens the state's 50,000 controversial oil and gas wells
September 19, 2013 1:10 PM ET
Cliff Willmeng was filming from the banks of the raging St. Vrain River in Colorado when he heard a sound like guitar strings being plucked. He looked around for the source and spotted, in the rapids near him, an electrical pole leaning at 45 degrees. "To be honest, it was probably dangerous, what I was doing," he admits. "[But] the more unsafe the travel became, the more important the work became."
Willmeng, a trauma nurse who lives in Lafayette, Colorado, wasn't documenting the devastation of the Front Range's 1000-year flood for thrills. For years, he's been involved in trying to ban the controversial drilling practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, from Colorado communities. As the flooding began to reach what the National Weather Service called "biblical" proportions, he realized that floodwater was headed straight for some of Colorado's most developed oil and gas drilling areas.
Concerned about how drilling sites would withstand the flooding – and what chemicals might end up in the water – Willmeng grabbed his camera. He headed towards neighboring Weld County, one of the nation's most productive agricultural counties and home to thousands of fracked wells.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/flooding-and-fracking-in-colorado-double-disaster-20130919#ixzz2fVm300xK
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