For the first time, the U.S. Geological Survey on Monday will release maps of where manmade earthquake hazards have been identified.
The agency has only previously released reports showing the location of natural earthquake hazards. The announcement will come in a 1 p.m. press conference Monday.
“This report can be used by government officials to make more informed decisions as well as emergency response personnel to assess vulnerability and provide safety information to those who are in potential danger,” the agency said. “Engineers can use this product to evaluate earthquake safety of buildings, bridges, pipelines and other important structures.”
According to USGS, manmade earthquakes are most often caused by wastewater disposal. That’s the process of taking water used in the oil and gas production process and injecting it into underground wells that are below aquifers used for drinking water.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, also can cause manmade earthquakes. Fracking is the process of injecting water at high speed to break up rock formations to extract oil and gas.
Other processes related to energy production also can cause manmade earthquakes.
According to the the Geological Survey, the number of earthquakes in the central and eastern United States has been increasing in recent years. There were an average of 21 earthquakes that registered a 3 or above on the Richter scale from 1973-2008, which jumped to 99 in 2009-2013.
In 2014, there were 659 earthquakes above a 3 on the Richter scale in the central and eastern United States.
The increase in the number of earthquakes has sparked a ramped-up effort by the agency to study earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S.
Four observation outposts in Texas, two in Oklahoma and one each in Kansas, Illinois and Ohio have worked together to study earthquakes in the middle of the country. The studies have been able to help seismologists understand if earthquakes are natural or induced by humans.
Oklahoma in particular has seen a large increase in the amount, and severity, of earthquakes during the fracking boom of the last half-decade.
Earlier this year, the state experienced a 5.1 magnitude earthquake that Geological Survey experts believed was related to wastewater injection. It was the largest earthquake in the state since a 5.6 magnitude earthquake hit in 2011, which scientists believe was caused by a 5.0 magnitude quake that hit days before.
In February, the Sierra Club and Public Justice filed a lawsuit against three different energy companies in Oklahoma. The lawsuit blames New Dominion, Chesapeake Operating and Devon Energy Production Company caused the increased amount of earthquakes in Oklahoma through fracking and wastewater injection.
“The dangers associated with fracking and its related processes has never been more clear than it is here in Oklahoma,” said Johnson Bridgwater, director of Sierra Club’s Oklahoma chapter. “Oklahomans, just as all Americans do, deserve the right to live in peace and comfort – not to live in fear of man-made earthquakes.”
Scientists are investigating if fracking and wastewater injection are the direct causes of the spike in earthquakes, but so far have only been able to find correlation.
The idea that fracking and waste water injection has caused the spike in seismic activity is rejected by industry groups. Those groups say that the volume of water injected into the Earth was higher in past decades and those higher volumes did not result in increased seismic activity.
