This is ridiculous. Why should any city have to purchase anything like this just because some greedy politicians are bought off by the energy companies and the fracking dollars? Scientists have already made the direct link between fracking and earthquakes so let’s quit playing games about whether there’s a connection. Instead of asking an already struggling city to pay for insurance, how about we either stop the fracking or make the fracking companies pay for all expenses linked to earthquakes, pollution and flammable water in faucets? Why should they get a free ride and make everyone else pay? Obviously they think that they’re Wall Street.

Bloomberg:

“You lose your whole house, that’s your life savings, and if you have no money or no insurance to replace it, then what do you do?” Mayor Charles P. Sammarone said in a telephone interview today. “Information is needed to make the homeowner and the residents feel safe.” There have been 11 earthquakes in this northeastern Ohio city since D&L; Energy Inc. began injecting drilling brine, a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing, 9,200 feet (2,804 meters) underground in December 2010. The strongest, magnitude 4.0, hit last week on New Year’s Eve. Sammarone said he has asked the City Council to pass a resolution tonight supporting state Representative Robert F. Hagan, a city Democrat who has called for a moratorium on so- called fracking and injection-well activity “until we can conclude it’s safe.”

Teabagging governor Kasich believes that the earthquakes are isolated incidents. Uh huh. They are isolated to fracking, so he’s sort of right.