Is hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, to blame for this cluster of earthquakes?

This is one of those stories that seems like something out of a science fiction novel but in fact it’s real life. Over a recent 24-hour period in and around Irving, Texas between Dallas and Fort Worth there were a bundle of earthquakes. And by bundle, I mean 11. The quakes ranged in magnitude from 1.7 to 3.6, according to EcoWatch.

The quakes were felt in metro Dallas where hundreds called 911 in fear. With more than 20 quakes since last September, it’s no coincidence that the area sits on top of a natural gas rich and heavily fracked shale deposit. Many researchers think hydraulic fracturing is to blame.

“The upsurge in quakes started in Texas around the time the oil and gas boom took hold several years ago,” reported StateImpact Texas. “The number of recorded earthquakes (most larger than 3.0) has increased tenfold since a drilling boom began several years ago. The Lone Star State is now one of the shakiest in the country, coming in sixth in the continuous U.S. for having larger quakes last year.”

In fact, the number of earthquakes in an area that rarely saw them before has increased by tenfold since the fracking boom began.

“It’s premature to speculate on the cause of this current series of seismic events,” said Brian Stump, Albritton Chair of Geological Sciences at Dallas’ Southern Methodist University (SMU), in a statement reported in the Dallas Morning News yesterday. “We’re just getting started. We want to support the local community in understanding these earthquakes, and the team appreciates the cooperation of the city of Irving, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and IRIS [the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Integrated Risk Information System] in helping us get the best information possible.”

According to StateImpact Texas, the earthquakes aren’t caused by the drilling used in hydraulic fracturing, they result from the disposal wells located thousands of feet under the ground. These wells store drilling fluid, a chemical-laced water encased in concrete.

“The model I use is called the air hockey table model,” Cliff Frohlich, a research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin said to StateImpact Texas. “You have an air hockey table, suppose you tilt it, if there’s no air on, the puck will just sit there. Gravity wants it to move but it doesn’t because there friction [with the table surface].” But if you turn the air on for the air hockey table, the puck slips.

“Faults are the same,” he says. If you pump water in a fault, the fault can slip, causing an earthquake.

“Scientists in my community know that injection can sometimes cause earthquakes,” Frohlich says.

What’s crazy is that more people aren’t nervous that manmade earthquakes seem to plague heavily fracked areas leaving residents wondering what the heck is going on.

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Image: Simon Fraser University

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Apparently everything really is bigger in Texas, even the hypocrites: The head of the biggest natural gas producer in the U.S. is suing to keep hydraulic fracturing (fracking) out of his own backyard.

When we imagine anti-hydraulic fracturing activists, a well-suited executive from the fossil fuel industry almost never enters the picture. That’s why many are reeling after the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, had joined his neighbors in a lawsuit designed to halt nearby hydraulic fracturing operations.

Before we get all excited and start pointing fingers, it’s important to examine the details. Tillerson’s move isn’t motivated by fears of what hydraulic fracturing will do to the air, water, and soil, as some reports have implied. It’s aimed instead at blocking construction of a water tower that’s necessary for fracking operations to continue (hydraulic fracturing requires a huge amount of water). Viewed in this light, Tillerson’s move is more of a strange showing of solidarity between residents of what I can only imagine is a very well-manicured neighborhood in Bartonville, Texas.

As the Wall Street Journal reports: “[Tillerson] and his neighbors had filed suit to block the tower, saying it is illegal and would create ‘a noise nuisance and traffic hazards,’ in part because it would provide water for use in hydraulic fracturing.”

“Tillerson’s attorney told the Journal he had no concerns about fracking-related traffic and rather was simply opposed to a water tower hovering over the 83-acre horse ranch he and wife Renda, a former competitive barrel jumper, share,” explains The Dallas Morning News.

So, a rich guy is more concerned about preserving his view than protecting his water supply–so what? Well for one thing it’s a direct contradiction of rhetoric the fossil fuel industry has forced down the throat of communities from Pennsylvania to California: hydraulic fracturing is harmless, non-disruptive and healthy for everyone.

Unless you’re a wealthy oil baron with lots of clout in your small Texas town. Then it becomes unsightly, a nuisance, and a threat to property values. Whether or not Tillerson says it out loud or not, at the very least hydraulic fracturing disturbs the peace–of the environment, wildlife, and anyone else who happens to be living nearby. No one should be forced to acquiesce these things to the fossil fuel industry just because there’s profit to be made. Whether you’re a stay-at-home-mom or the CEO of ExxonMobil.

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Images: Wikimedia Commons, rifuture

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It’s the end of June already, and the earth’s half-spin around the sun has brought us ladies plenty to wring our delicate little hands about. From Iranian clerics blaming earthquakes on our breasts to oil spills wreaking havoc on our pregnancies, 2010 has made us reach for the smelling salts on numerous occasions. Here at EcoSalon, we’ve covered women and the environment with vim, bringing you celebratory communiques alongside melancholic missives. Below, you’ll find a roundup of the news in 2010 thus far. If the past six months are any indication, the rest of the year will be a doozy. Feeling faint yet?

• Is GINK the new DINK? It used to be that childfree couples were called DINKs – Double Income, No Kids. But the great American greenwash has influenced reproductive choices as well, with an increasing number of couples citing the environment as a reason to go kidless. A recent study by Oregon State University added fuel to the fire, revealing that not having kids is 20 times more environmentally friendly than any other day to day green task, like recycling. Lisa Hymas of Grist coined the term GINK – Green Inclinations, No Kids – to describe childfree tree huggers like herself.

• Condoms came under attack earlier this year, with women’s health writers and scientists bemoaning the prophylactic’s sorry environmental record of sullying our beaches and clogging up our landfills. While greensters wondered whether condoms are biodegradable (likely not – their decomposable latex is mixed with human-made chemicals), we asked another question: why have this conversation in the first place? Condoms, as a blogger at EcoGeek noted, are “the single most important environmental innovation” ever, curbing environmentally-catastrophic population growth.

• Congress attacked killer chemicals this spring when members of the House and Senate introduced versions of the Safe Chemicals Act, a bill meant to fortify a toothless, decades-old law against allowing dangerous chemicals in household products (we all know how well that one worked…hello bisphenol-a). Uteruses in America rejoiced at the news: the Safe Chemicals Act is a boon to women, whose reproductive systems have been under siege by infertility-causing chemicals in water bottles and other plastics.

• In April, an Iranian cleric asserted that women who don’t cover up cause earthquakes. His declaration–meant to dissuade Iranian women from unveiling–ignited a response in the U.S., when blogger Jennifer McCreight organized a Boobquake, a day in which women wore low-cut tops without tectonic incident to prove the cleric wrong. But what could have been a bold political stunt turned into a ho-hum protest, with men egging on their breast-baring peers while feminists complained that the plight of Iranian women became fodder for a Girls Gone Wild spectacle.

• As if the earthquake itself didn’t cause enough damage, sexual violence rates spiked in Haiti in the months after the disaster. According to an article in Women’s eNews, aid workers in a major Port-au-Prince refugee camp fielded daily reports of rape, prompting the United Nations to send a special unit of 130 female Bangladeshi soldiers to address the violence. Lamentably, the post-disaster rape crisis was not unique to Haiti alone; many Hurricane Katrina survivors were similarly re-victimized.

• On the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, we noted that the pill’s invention by women’s rights crusader Margaret Sanger initiated the era of modern family planning, allowing women to choose the number and spacing of their children – a boon for their health and the health of their babies alike. But while the pill has done its part to keep our skyrocketing population in check (if you think things are bad, just imagine the world without it) its environmental record isn’t spotless – the hormones in the pill, excreted into waste water through urine, cause fatal mutations in fish populations.

• When a Houston tanning salon called upon the spirit of Coco Chanel to promote its new earth-friendly false tanning beet spray, we called foul. As legend has it, Chanel sparked the tanning craze in America when she stepped off a boat in Cannes with perfectly bronzed skin. Though Coco was a pioneering designer, breaching the boundary between menswear and womenswear, the tanning trendsetter didn’t galvanize women to leave the drudgery of housework in order to bask in the sunshine. Rather, Coco inadvertently created another unrealistic beauty standard.

• While much of the initial news surrounding the BP oil spill focused on the disaster’s effect on wildlife, we asked about its impact on human livelihoods. Coastal Women for Change, a community organization that sprung out of the post-Katrina haze to bring attention to the need for improved childcare in Biloxi, Mississippi, has stepped up after the spill by serving as a conduit for information from the Environmental Protection Agency to the local fishers. The biggest challenge? Getting fishers of different ethnic and economic backgrounds to rally together for their interests.

• Last year, journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn published their book Half the Sky, a groundbreaking tome arguing that international aid is more effective when directed toward women. While Kristof and WuDunn described women as the gatekeepers of health and well-being in their communities, they left out one green detail: the fact that women also hold the keys to conservation. In Indonesia, the Environmental Ministry has begun offering classes on water conservation to women in rural areas who are responsible for fetching and distributing water to their families.

• Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but we all care equally about the earth, right? Wrong. According to several articles this year, men and women display their green pride differently, with men working for big picture sustainability while women, ever the quibblers, take on recycling and composting projects. We pointed out the ludicrousy in this theory, noting that a handful of anecdotes don’t constitute a trend. With all this talk about men, women, and their green differences, we lose sight of the why we should go green at all.

• As if the oil spill wasn’t dangerous enough, the chemical dispersants used to clean it up could spell health risks for pregnant mothers and their unborn children. According to information recently released by the Environmental Protection Agency, chemicals that caused health problems in the cleanup workers on the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill are being used again today. Pregnant women have been advised to stay as far away from the contaminants as possible – a tall order for those women who actually live in the Gulf.

Image: xjyxjy

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