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Catalog of north Texas earthquakes confirms continuing effects of wastewater disposal
In their report published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, Louis Quinones and Heather DeShon of Southern Methodist University and colleagues confirm that seismicity rates in the basin have decreased since 2014, a trend that appears to correspond with a decrease in wastewater injection.
However, their analysis also notes that new faults have become active during this period, and that seismicity continues at a greater distance from injection wells over time, suggesting that "far-field" changes in seismic stress will be important for understanding the basin's future earthquake hazard potential.
"One thing we have come to appreciate is how broadly injection in the basin has modified stress within entire basin," said DeShon. The first thing researchers noted with wastewater injection into the basin "was the reactivation of individual faults," she added, "and what we're now starting to see is essentially the leftover energy on all sorts of little faults being released by the cumulative volume that's been put into the basin."
[...] The researchers found that overall seismicity in the Fort Worth Basin has been strongly correlated in time and space with wastewater injection activities, with most seismicity occurring within 15 kilometers of disposal wells.
Tracking Induced Seismicity in the Fort Worth Basin: A Summary of the 2008–2018 North Texas Earthquake Study Catalog [DOI: 10.1785/0120190057] [DX]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Wednesday June 12 2019, @02:00PM (4 children)
What is the impact? Do these low magnitude earthquakes have any negative impact? Increased subsidence in houses or anything like that?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday June 12 2019, @03:29PM (1 child)
Considering the clay in Texas already cracks people's foundations, probably not a whole lot.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday June 13 2019, @05:19PM
As someone who lives in the DFW area, I can assure you the impact of wastewater injection earthquakes has, thus far, been so minimal as to be unnoticeable. The local news has made hardly a peep about it.
For residences, concrete slab foundations at ground level are the custom in these parts. They don't build basements. The concrete slab is cheap and quick. And though it could be, it definitely is not engineered for the long term, or for the expansive clay soils. In dry summers, I've seen cracks in the soil open up to 2 inches wide. You can stick your foot in those, halfway to the ankle. It's a lucky homeowner who doesn't have cracks in the foundation after 15 years. I've always felt that standards ought to be raised. End this madness of every house eventually needing the services of a foundation repair company.
No need to invoke wastewater injection and earthquakes, foundations have been cracking apart in Texas for decades before that started.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:01PM
The earthquake magnitude is a deceptive measure:
1. The collapse of certain preexisting faults can lead to chain-reactions.
2. Localized small faults collapsing can damage specific buildings' foundations without even triggering the seismographs unless they're right on top of them.
3. Some preventive measures taken against earthquakes aren't easy to evaluate: When Oklahoma decides against building / repairing infrastructure projects because having some 4 low magnitude quakes a day means they don't trust the roads to live up to their planned life times, you're not getting any return for all that tax money at the state level. So, when the oil runs out, the state will end up worse than it was and people with money will simply take it and leave to somewhere that doesn't have high infrastructure costs that raise the taxes.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:28PM
Well they do tend to occur in places that have had historically low incidence of seismic activity. And therefore, building standards don't make people take precautions for earthquakes.
Whether that has translated into actual damages, I don't know.