Fault Lines

The verdict was unanimous: Every call to real estate agents in Reno and Irving asking about the effects of quakes on property values produced the same result: a quick hang-up. No one, it seemed, wanted to talk about whether homes in those areas are becoming more difficult to sell.

Affected residents have no doubt about that.

“I cannot sell this house. Who would buy this house knowing about the earthquakes?” said Wallace, “At the same time I’m frightened to stay here because of the quake damage. … And I’ve got neighbors who have it worse. But no one will admit to being at fault, so no one is going to come in here and repair the damage.”

Even though she was able to find a company to sell her earthquake insurance for future damage, she said, the staggering $14,000 deductible means that she may never use it “unless half my house falls down.”

Seto, who lives nearby, said the cracks in her walls “might not look like a lot, but by the time those cracks have worked their way through the sheetrock and the paint and have become visible, you know there is more damage inside the walls. How much damage? I don’t know. I certainly do not want to repair it yet because my insurance will not cover it. And if I repair it, who knows when it will happen again?”

After she bought her house, Seto found out there have been quakes in Irving going back to 2011. “We were never told, of course,” she said — a common theme among Irving homeowners. “Even the person who sold me the house never mentioned it. My feeling is that they were glad to get out when they did.”

Beyond problems with her house, “This has affected my quality of life and the quality of life of my neighbors as well,” Seto said. “None of us can relax. We don’t know when the next quake is going to come. We don’t know how strong it will be. We don’t know what damage it will cause. I find myself waking up at night when the train runs by, wondering if it’s another earthquake.”

Wallace agreed. “I am really freaking out,” she said. “I cannot sleep. We had another one last week. I don’t feel safe here.”

Seto is hoping to organize a group of 50 to 100 Irving homeowners and find an attorney who will make the case that tax assessments on earthquake-damaged homes should be reduced.

“If we could all go to the city to demand a tax adjustment, that might get the city’s attention,” she said. “We’re all deeply affected by these earthquakes.”

A City of Irving spokesperson said home devaluations due to quake damage have not been an issue. In Reno, Stokes said that she hadn’t seen a property tax adjustment as yet, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw something about property values next year.”

 ******

Equipment is in place all over the world to record serious seismic activity. Thus far, however, most of the quakes attributed to disposal wells have been small, less than a magnitude of 2 on the Richter scale, with some hitting a magnitude of 3 and only a handful stronger than that. Since Texas has had no seismic activity until the last few years, it was only recently that the U.S. Geological Survey placed seismometers in North Texas.

Scientists from Southern Meth-odist University installed portable seismometers in Azle and Reno in 2013 to try to determine the source of the quakes those towns began experiencing in late 2012. Then, when quakes began occurring regularly near the site of the old Texas Stadium, SMU teamed with the USGS to discover their source. In January, after installing 20 portable earthquake monitors, SMU scientists, according to an interim report from the university and the USGS, were able to determine that the quakes were relatively shallow and “concentrated along a narrow two-mile line that indicates a fault extending from Irving to West Dallas.”

Bob Jackman, an independent petroleum geologist and former oil and gas operator from Tulsa, is less constrained in offering his opinion of what’s causing the earthquakes both in Oklahoma and North Texas. “The disposal wells are causing them. That’s not a feeling or an opinion, that’s a fact. I’m a geologist, and that candid remark is backed by numerous USGS peer-reviewed reports that are saying the disposal wells are causing the swarm of earthquakes in the region.”

Jackman said the quakes are caused by the combination of large volumes of wastewater being pumped into the wells at high pressure and a “prominent system of fault structures or systems” belowground. “We’ve got the Nemaha Ridge here in Oklahoma, and they’re thinking that part of that ridge extends all the way down to Fort Worth.”

Not all injection wells empty tens of thousands of barrels of wastewater daily onto fault structures, Jackman said, which is why most wells around the country have not produced quakes. But when the wells are operating near faults, he said, the wastewater can lubricate the faults, causing them to shift, which causes quakes.

“Officials in Oklahoma are still in denial on the issue, just as they are in Texas,” he said,  “but there is a preponderance of evidence by seismologists with no contrary peer-reviewed opinions.”

******