5 things the media isn뭪 telling you about human activity and earthquakes

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Wed Aug-24-11 01:28 PM
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5 things the media isn뭪 telling you about human activity and earthquakes

Source: Raw Story
By Nora Eisenberg

Shortly before midnight Mountain Time on August 23, the largest earthquake in Colorado in more than a century, with a magnitude of 5.3, sent tremors as far away as Kansas. Some twelve hours later, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake centered in Northern Virginia sent shock waves as far away as Toronto. The local damage in each event did not appear extensive, though structural effects, on bridges, tunnels, nuclear power plants and more are yet to be determined. Through the afternoon and evening of August 23rd, the national media uncovered the big story of the East Coast quake: where their colleagues posted in New York or Washington were and what they thought when they felt a bump, sway, rumble or funny feeling. But with no national correspondents already on site, the Colorado quake was left to the locals. But both quakes were profound, rippling with far-reaching lessons about our outdated and unsafe energy practices that we ignore at great peril.

1. Human activity can cause earthquakes. No less an authority than the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) asserts this. And they offer as an illustration a series of atypical Colorado quakes in the 1960s, resulting from the Army뭩 injection of waste fluid produced by its Rocky Mountain Arsenal chemical weapons plant northeast of Denver.

2. Seismic activity has been linked to the injection of waste water from the unconventional production of natural gas using hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking). A southeastern New Mexico area that has been experiencing repeated earthquakes since the late 1990s are near the injection wells for oil production waste water, the New Mexico Tech Observatory has reported. In April 2011, in Arkansas, two natural gas wells were closed down until scientists can determine why over a thousand unexplained earthquakes occurred in areas near drilling sites and waste injection wells. Since the well뭩 closing, a supervisor at the Arkansas Geological Survey reports, incidence of earthquakes have declined dramatically, much as they did in Colorado fifty years ago.

. The petroleum industry is resistant to taking into account scientific and historical data. In late summer 2001, a swarm of earthquakes occurred near fracking waste water injection wells outside of Trinidad, Colorado, and USGS has not ruled out the wells as the cause. The epicenter of the August 22 Colorado quake was Trinidad, the capital of Las Animas County, the vastest county in Colorado and, for over a decade, the hotbed of state뭩 most extensive fracking operations, including the unconventional coalbed methane extraction. Las Animas is one of seven locations in the U.S. where the EPA announced that it will launch a study to determine the impacts of hydraulic fracturing, focusing on Las Animas' drinking water. But local groups say the physical stability of the region could be at risk.

More at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/24/5-things-the-media-isnt-telling-you-about-human-activity-and-earthquakes/