The Society of Environmental Journalists, which partners with the Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) by recruiting mentors for FIJ grantees, is planning its 2016 conference in Sacramento California for September 21-25. Last fall, FIJ grantee Elizabeth Shogren attended the 2015 SEJ conference in Oklahoma, and filed this report:
Society of Environmental Journalist conference fieldtrip explores surge in induced earthquakes.
By Elizabeth Shogren, DC correspondent, High Country News
Soon after I arrive in Oklahoma City for the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference, a former editor of mine, who lives here, tells me, almost with a shrug that his house shook twice just the week before. My colleague and many of his fellow Oklahomans have managed to maintain a high degree of nonchalance as they live through one the most mysterious environmental stories in recent years—the proliferation of earthquakes induced by oil companies injecting their wastewater deep into the earth. The hotbed is in Oklahoma, where two earthquakes a year measuring magnitude 3 or above would be normal. Starting in 2012, the state started measuring a few dozen a year of that magnitude. Last year, a whopping 585 measured magnitude 3 or above, and in the first nine months of this year, 647 did, according to state and US Geological Survey data.
I’m one of dozens of reporters to pile into a bus for a daylong SEJ fieldtrip to learn about hydraulic fracturing, the drilling technique behind the US energy boom, and the earthquakes. On board are several experts, including US Geological Survey seismologist George Choy who recently joined an agency team focused on the induced earthquakes. So far, the earthquakes have caused limited damage, but once faults are activated, more quakes can follow. This region of the country is vulnerable because structures from homes to bridges weren’t built with earthquakes in mind. “We don’t know what the maximum size earthquake will be,” says Choy.
“People should certainly be concerned that the earthquake hazard has increased.”
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