injection wells

This June 24, 2011 photo shows a brine injection well site operated by D&L Energy, Inc. in Boardman, Ohio. Associated Press

(Associated Press)

In one of his first actions as Pennsylvania's new environmental secretary, Mike Krancer made a decision five years ago that protected local drinking water and inadvertently put a neighboring state at risk for hundreds of earthquakes.

When rivers and streams were testing positive for high concentrations of pollutants and chemicals linked to cancer, state regulators asked Marcellus Shale drillers to stop disposing their fracking wastewater at 16 municipal and commercial treatment plants.

The Corbett administration made it clear the April 2011 notice was a request, not an order, and believed voluntary compliance could be achieved.

Krancer's plan worked, and soon many Pennsylvania drillers stopped dumping wastewater here and started sending it to deep injection wells in Ohio.

It's a practice that has lead to numerous earthquakes in the neighboring state, according to scientists.

Within eight months, there had been 11 earthquakes in the Youngstown area, a little more than an hour's drive from Pittsburgh and the southwest corner of Pennsylvania that was home to numerous drilling company headquarters.

But it was the 12th one - a 4.0 magnitude earthquake on New Year's Eve - that got everyone's attention.

"Every single person in the Mahoning Valley felt this earthquake," said state Sen. Joe Schiavoni, a Youngstown Democrat.

It was enough to make drilling supporter Gov. John Kasich, shut down the wastewater well that was blamed as the source of the quake, along with other tremors in the area.

State Democrats called for a public hearing while the seismic activity was reviewed.

Geologists and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources agreed injecting fracking wastewater was the cause of the earthquakes, largely because they were unlike any previous seismic activity in the state and all happened within a mile of an injection well.

Fracking involves blasting millions of gallons of water, laced with chemicals and sand, deep into the ground to unlock vast reserves of natural gas, a boon both for energy companies and a public hungry for cheap sources of fuel.

That process, though, leaves behind toxic wastewater that must be expensively treated or else pumped deep into the earth. The wastewater is extremely briny and can contain toxic chemicals from the drilling process - and sometimes radioactivity from deep underground.

While Ohio has about a quarter of the gas wells that Pennsylvania does, it's absorbing most of the waste.

More than a billion gallons of fracking wastewater produced by Pennsylvania drillers has been sent to the crevices of Ohio in the last couple years, according to state records.

That's one of the reasons the Buckeye State is now on a list of eight places at the highest risk of manmade earthquakes along with Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, according to a report released Monday by the U.S. Geological Survey.

In new maps released this week, geologists said approximately 7 million people could be affected by a significant increase in both natural and human-induced earthquakes.

The central and eastern parts of the U.S. could now experience damage similar to the high-hazard earthquake areas of California, according to the report.

Most of the earthquakes will be small, less than a magnitude 3. The largest manmade earthquake recorded was a 5.6 earthquake five years ago in Oklahoma, which was linked to a wastewater injection well.

Pennsylvania's geology ensures it's not a good candidate for disposal wells, and there aren't many here. The commonwealth sits atop a thick buffer and basement faults that can be extremely hazardous if disturbed, scientists said.

The eight active injection wells in Pennsylvania don't reach near the faults. Two are in Clearfield, Somerset and Warren counties, while Beaver and Venango counties have one.

Two inactive wells are in Erie and Indiana counties.

The list of proposed injection wells includes two in Clearfield County, Warren County, and one in Elk and Indiana counties.

None of those wells are as deep as Ohio's, which can go beyond 10,000 feet. The Pennsylvania wells are considered shallow to moderately deep at 2,000 to 9,000 feet, according to the Department of Enivornmental Protection.

While no unusual seismic activity is being observed in the state, environmental regulators say they're paying close attention to the latest Geological Survey report.

"DEP takes well-induced seismicity issues very seriously, and is taking every precaution to ensure that these events do not occur in (Pennsylvania)," spokesman Neil Shader.

DEP recently partnered with the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to create a statewide network to monitor seismic activity overall, not just events related to injection wells, he said.

"This network will provide important information about (Pennsylvania's) geology that will help inform future decisions about injection wells," Shader said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.