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The Dallas Morning News: Earthquakes at DFW Airport continued for years after oil and gas wastewater well was shut

Dallas Morning News

Originally Posted: February 21, 2018

“Faults are not like a light switch – you don’t turn off a well and automatically stop triggering earthquakes.” — Heather DeShon, SMU seismologist.

Earthquakes beneath DFW International Airport continued for seven years after an oil and gas company shut a nearby wastewater injection well that had been linked to the quakes, according to a new study by scientists at Southern Methodist University.

A wastewater well that continues to operate at the northern end of the airport – and which some area residents have said should be closed — was probably not involved in the events and poses little earthquake hazard, the researchers concluded.

“Faults are not like a light switch – you don’t turn off a well and automatically stop triggering earthquakes,” said Heather DeShon, a seismologist at Southern Methodist University and co-author of the paper, in an email.

The earthquakes at DFW Airport started on Halloween 2008, seven weeks after Chesapeake Energy began injecting wastewater  into a well at the southern end of the airport. Scientists at SMU and the University of Texas at Austin investigated the quakes at the time and concluded they were most likely associated with the well. READ MORE