Greenbrier Earthquakes, Is Fracking Responsible?
By: Jocelyn Tovar, KARK 4 NEWS
Updated: November 2, 2012
An earthquake swarm in Arkansas in the last few years has raised many theories.
Many blame it on fracking, or water injection wells, that triggered these quakes.
"It sounded like someone ran into the garage door with their car," said Susan Cole. "I looked at my husband and said was that just an earthquake? "
"The earthquake came through and the whole house was shaking real hard," says Aryca Hall.
We asked Bill Townsend if the earthquakes scare him, and he replied that they're all used to it by now.
That might be because there were 1,400 recorded earthquakes on the Guy-Greenbrier fault line in two years and so folks have learned to live with the ground shaking beneath their feet.
Scott Ausbrooks with the Arkansas Geological Survey, said an enormous swarm of earthquakes struck in just one month.
"We saw a burst of activity almost 700 between September and October," he said.
The area right on the fault line is already seismically active so any disturbance could easily trigger an earthquake.
"What we found was based on the temporal and spacial placement," said Ausbrooks. "In other words, when the earthquakes occurred, where they occurred, the correlation was much more with injection wells than anything else."
Findings that led to the four injection wells eventually being shut down by the State Oil and Gas Commission in July of 2011, which meant an end to the fracking.
"Several weeks ago we had two small ones," said Ausbrooks. "One you could hear and feel pretty good."
Although there's now a moratorium on these wells in the area. that doesn't mean there won't be aftershocks.
Other areas of the country recorded those were felt as many as seven years after wells were stopped.
Ausbrooks says the decision to stop the wells and end fracking should be at least the beginning of the end to this problem.
The moratorium on any wells in the area is permanent.
Many blame it on fracking, or water injection wells, that triggered these quakes.
"It sounded like someone ran into the garage door with their car," said Susan Cole. "I looked at my husband and said was that just an earthquake? "
"The earthquake came through and the whole house was shaking real hard," says Aryca Hall.
We asked Bill Townsend if the earthquakes scare him, and he replied that they're all used to it by now.
That might be because there were 1,400 recorded earthquakes on the Guy-Greenbrier fault line in two years and so folks have learned to live with the ground shaking beneath their feet.
Scott Ausbrooks with the Arkansas Geological Survey, said an enormous swarm of earthquakes struck in just one month.
"We saw a burst of activity almost 700 between September and October," he said.
The area right on the fault line is already seismically active so any disturbance could easily trigger an earthquake.
"What we found was based on the temporal and spacial placement," said Ausbrooks. "In other words, when the earthquakes occurred, where they occurred, the correlation was much more with injection wells than anything else."
Findings that led to the four injection wells eventually being shut down by the State Oil and Gas Commission in July of 2011, which meant an end to the fracking.
"Several weeks ago we had two small ones," said Ausbrooks. "One you could hear and feel pretty good."
Although there's now a moratorium on these wells in the area. that doesn't mean there won't be aftershocks.
Other areas of the country recorded those were felt as many as seven years after wells were stopped.
Ausbrooks says the decision to stop the wells and end fracking should be at least the beginning of the end to this problem.
The moratorium on any wells in the area is permanent.
