{"id":33470,"date":"2014-01-03T10:56:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-03T16:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=33470"},"modified":"2014-01-07T10:09:02","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T16:09:02","slug":"anger-greets-state-officials-in-quake-prone-texas-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/01\/03\/anger-greets-state-officials-in-quake-prone-texas-town\/","title":{"rendered":"Anger Greets State Officials in Quake-Prone Texas Town"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Residents<\/a>

Mose Buchele<\/p>

One speaker asked fellow residents to raise their hands if they've heard a loud "boom" accompanying recent earthquakes. <\/p><\/div>\n

Azle, Texas –<\/strong> “I’ve got a crack in my hallway,” chuckled Marion LeBert as he stood in the parking lot of Azle High School.<\/p>\n

“Oh my! We have sink holes in our yard. And they’ve gotten bigger since these earthquakes,”\u00a0commiserated Tracy Napier.<\/p>\n

The two were among hundreds of townspeople hoping to get answers at a meeting hosted last\u00a0 night by the\u00a0 Railroad Commission of Texas<\/a>, the state’s oil and gas industry regulators. The area, in Parker and Tarrant counties, didn’t experience earthquakes until recently. Now, it’s seen a swarm of over twenty minor ones in the last two months, troubling residents and causing damage to some homes. The earthquakes would be the topic of discussion.<\/p>\n

\"Merian<\/a>

Mose Buchele<\/p>

Marion LeBert, Tracy Napier and Tommy Eldridge (left to right) traded earthquake stories before the meeting.<\/p><\/div>\n

“I just want to kind of sit back and see what [state regulators] are gonna say,” LeBert told StateImpact Texas. “I’ve lived here 20 years and we never had anything like this till they started all the drilling and the fracking and stuff. All I want to do is get the truth out of them.”<\/p>\n

Scientific research has shown how similar quakes are caused when waste water from oil and gas drilling is injected<\/a> into underground disposal wells. This area of North Texas has many such disposal wells. But the link has not been publicly acknowledged by the Railroad Commission (though agency staff agree it exists in internal emails and PowerPoint presentations obtained by StateImpact Texas<\/a>). Ahead of last night’s meeting, Railroad Commissioner David Porter had said he would would talk about plans to deal with the quakes, signaling that the Commission was willing to publicly offer some answers.<\/p>\n

As the meeting got underway, it quickly became clear that plan had changed.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n