The Kansas Community of Pratt was rocked this afternoon with a 4.6 Earthquake. The earthquake, located about 89 miles west of Wichita and close to nearby Pratt is neither the first or largest earthquake this year in Kansas, but continues a trend of increased seismic activity.
Over the past week, Kansas has been host to 8 earthquakes and over 37 this month.
http://earthquaketrack.com/...
The rise of earthquakes, which some connect with fracking remains a hotly debated topic amongst Republicans.
Yesterday in Oklahoma City, T. Boone Pickens argued that there was no connection between the two practices, they were simply too far apart.
What is clear though is that the rate of earthquakes, like those today are clearly on the rise.
Becky Oskin at the Washington Post postulated that one of the key issues isn't the fracking itself, but rather the disposal of the waste water which helps create the problem.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, extracts far more water from these underground oil-laden rocks than traditional drilling. Currently there is no way to treat, store and release the billions of gallons of wastewater at the surface. Instead, drillers pump the fluid back underground, below groundwater, into wells where it sometimes triggers earthquakes.
For instance, in Oklahoma, state records show that companies injected more than 1.1 billion barrels of wastewater into the ground in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available. The following year, Oklahoma had more magnitude-3 earthquakes than California did. The quakes clustered around wastewater injection wells.
Oklahoma’s current earthquake rate is now 600 times higher than its pre-fracking rate, which was based on the state’s natural seismicity, the state geological survey said.
With a 4.6 in the books today, and reported aftershocks nearing 3.3, Oklahoma and Kansas residents are coming to the realization that their homes, which were never designed with earthquake safety in mind, might need to look at their home insurance policies and building standards from now on.
