New York Zoning and Municipal Law Blog
The Journal Science has published an article suggesting that hydro tracking may be contributing to increases in the number and severity of earthquakes in the eastern United States. We do not usually discuss scientific articles in this Blog. In this instance, since the article discusses the need for regulation and the State of New York, as well as many municipalities are looking at regulating or even banning hydro fracking, we thought this was a timely article.
The article notes
” It has long been known that impoundment of reservoirs, surface and underground mining, withdrawal of fluids and gas from the subsurface, and injection of fluids into underground formations are capable of inducing earthquakes….several of the largest earthquakes in the U.S. midcontinent in 2011 and 2012 may have been triggered by nearby disposal wells….The petroleum industry needs clear requirements for operation, regulators must have a solid scientific basis for those requirements, and the public needs assurance that the regulations are sufficient and are being followed.”