(Ohio) State links northeast Ohio quakes to injection wells: Kasich orders work temporarily stopped
State links northeast Ohio quakes to injection wells
Kasich orders work temporarily stopped on wells in Youngstown area
By Joe Vardon
The Columbus Dispatch Saturday December 31, 2011 10:32 PM
The Kasich administration has put a temporary stop to the disposal of waste from oil and natural-gas drilling in wells within a 5-mile radius of a particular Youngstown well a well believed to be the cause of 11 earthquakes since March, including a 4.0 quake that struck around 3 p.m. yesterday.
Officials from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources think that waste pumped into the Youngstown-area well, referred to as Northstar No. 1, has been seeping into a previously unknown fault line in eastern Ohio, causing the seismic activity. The moratorium, issued yesterday by Jim Zehringer, the Natural Resources Departments director, affects four other injection wells.
The 5-mile radius, we were told by our geologists, is an adequate buffer zone for the fault line, Zehringer said. There are four other wells, none of them active, but were not going to allow any activity to take place in these wells.
(more at link)
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/12/31/new-quakes.html
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This is just the beginning. Something to keep an eye on!