The connection between injection wells and earthquakes has been known since the 1980s, according to Jeff Dick, professor and chair of the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Youngstown State University.
Put simply, an earthquake can occur if the well injects liquid into a fault line or the liquid escapes through a fracture in the surrounding rock and finds its way to a fault line.
Dick said these incidents have been well documented in academic and industry journals over the years. He believes the Youngstown and other recent injection well-related earthquakes have received wider notice for several reasons. First, the amount of injection well activity has increased dramatically in recent years and is tied to a hot topic, fracking waste. Second, he points out that social media and the internet allows word to spread much faster today than back in the 1980s when the earthquakes were a current topic among academics and industry insiders.
