Can fracking cause earthquakes?

by Cassady Craighill

August 21, 2013

Pennsylvania Fracking Gas well being drilled on the felter farm near Wyalusing PA. * City: Wyalusing * State: Pennsylvania

© Les Stone / Greenpeace

Pennsylvania fracking gas well being drilled near a PA farm.

Pennsylvania fracking
gas well being drilled near a PA farm.

If recent activity in Ohio is any testament, then the answer is yes.

Wait. Earthquakes in Ohio?

That’s right. Not only can fracking poison our water and inject hazardous chemicals into the ground below our feet, it can also cause earthquakes in places they have never occurred prior.

Youngstown, Ohio has never had an earthquake before. But it does have a fracking well. The well started pumping fracking wasterwater from neighboring Pennsylvania in 2010, and by the next year seismometers recorded more than 100 earthquakes in the area.

The fracking well is to blame for triggering the earthquakes, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research. Tremor activity correlated with activity from the well.

Read more here from Al Jazeera English.

Today is National Call In Day where Americans against fracking are letting President Obama know thathydraulic fracturing is not worthincreased earthquakes and undrinkable water.

Add your voice now!

Call the Presidentat1-888-660-2594and tell him: Fracking threatens the air we breathe, the water we drink, the communities we love and the climate on which we all depend. Dont pursue policies that promote fracking and the export of natural gas. We need to ban fracking now.

Cassady Craighill

By Cassady Craighill

Cassady is a media officer for Greenpeace USA based on the East Coast. She covers climate change and energy, particularly how both issues relate to the Trump administration.

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