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Tag: earthquakes

Anderson Reservoir (Tony Avelar / Associated Press)

Silicon Valley’s Key Reservoir May Collapse

A pricey retrofitting project at one of Santa Clara County’s largest dams has been delayed by a full year after engineers discovered nearby “trace faults” that could elevate the risk of the dam’s collapse in the event of a strong earthquake.

anti-fracking campaigners

Duh: Earthquakes Not Caused by Fracking

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow gleefully teased the earthquakes in Oklahoma as “the story that might keep you up at night.” On her October 16 show, she stated that Oklahoma’s earthquakes are: “The terrible and unintended consequence of the way we get oil and gas out of the ground.… from fracking operations.” Yet, when her guest, Jeremy Boak, Oklahoma Geological Survey director, corrected her by saying “it’s not actually frackwater,” she didn’t change her tune.

Natural Gas Drilling

Study: Only 0.1 Percent of North Texas Injection Wells Potentially Involved in Earthquakes

According to a new study released on Wednesday, underground wastewater injection wells used in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” have virtually no role whatsoever in the earthquakes in the North Texas area during the past few years. The study was conducted by a group affiliated with the petroleum industry, but used publicly available data on seismic activity in the region and a long list of independent peer-reviewed scientific research to reach this conclusion.