Update: SMU to deploy seismic monitors in and around Azle following weeks of earthquakes
December 9, 2013
The US Geological Survey's latest quake map showing tremors stronger than 2.5-magnitude in the past 30 days. The orange dot is today's.
Update at 4 p.m.: SMU says seismologists will deploy seismic monitors in and around Azle to study the series of quakes that have been ratting that part of the Barnett Shale since the beginning of November.
In a release issued Monday, the university says the first batch will be deployed as early as this week. They will be installed "in private homes, businesses, public buildings and schools with an existing broadband connection to the Internet," says the release. Data will be made available online, via the U.S. Geological Survey, which is providing four monitors.
More than a dozen other sensors will be set up at confidential locations in coming days.
"We are first going to focus in on where the earthquakes have been occurring — about a five- to six-mile area near Reno and Azle," says associate professor of geophysics Heather DeShon, who will be leading the research team. "How long the monitors remain depends on continued seismicity. We're thinking a few months."
Original item posted at 7:30 a.m.: For a second straight morning, there has been another earthquake northwest of Fort Worth — the 25th since November 1.
This one was among the largest recorded since the beginning of this quake outbreak: a 3.7-magnitude tremor located about 11 miles northeast of Mineral Wells, where, at the end of November, there were back-to-back quakes registering 3.6 and 2.8, prompting the Tarrant Regional Water District to conduct daily inspections of the Eagle Mountain Reservoir.
This morning's quake occurred at 3:23, and was felt from Fort Worth to Weatherford.
It follows a Sunday-morning tremor that yet again rattled Azle, which has had its fill of earthquakes in recent weeks. Yesterday's was a 3.6 felt from Dallas to Oklahoma City.
It's believed most, if not all, of the quakes are being caused by injection wells used to dispose of wastewater from gas drilling. The Texas Railroad Commission will neither confirm or deny that sentiment.
"Texas has a long history of safe operations of injection and disposal wells (RRC issued the first injection well permit in 1936, and statewide there are more than 33,000 injection and disposal wells), and staff has not identified a significant correlation between faulting and injection practices," spokesperson Ramona Nye told us earlier this month.
But they're looking into it: "When earthquakes are reported, our staff will determine if saltwater disposal wells are nearby and then inspect the facilities to ensure that they are in compliance with their Railroad Commission permit conditions. Please keep in mind, that some reported earthquake epicenters in Texas have not been near saltwater disposal or injection wells. Commission staff this week inspected one Azle-area disposal well after the reported seismic events and found this disposal well was in compliance with Commission rules."
When reached this morning, Nye said via email that "at this time, Commission staff has no information about the causes of recent seismic events near Azle."
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