Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a process of extracting oil and gas by injecting pressurized water, sand and chemicals into layers of rock. Waste water from the process is then poured into underground wells.<\/p>\n
A 5.0 magnitude earthquake struck Cushing on November 6, damaging over 40 buildings. A month later, a series of five quakes struck the area again, with Cushing registering a 3.6 magnitude temblor and the strongest one coming in at 3.9 magnitude in Pawnee to the north.<\/p>\n
Among the buildings damaged in the November 6 quake were the offices of the Cushing Citizen newspaper, owned by David and Myra Reid. The Reids have now filed a class action lawsuit along with Cushing residents Valerie Branyan and Timothy Harris, asking for $10,000 for property damages, punitive damages and emotional distress, reports the Oklahoman<\/a>.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n \u201cWhile powerful earthquakes have become a regular part of life for many Oklahomans in recent years, that does not mean we should sit back and accept them as the new norm,\u201d<\/em> said Curt Marshall, an attorney at Weitz & Luxenberg, one of the firms representing the plaintiffs.<\/p>\n Oklahoma has seen a marked increase in earthquakes since fracking operations began, going from only three quakes of magnitude 3.0 and higher in 2009 to 907 in 2015.<\/p>\n Companies named in the lawsuit are White Star Petroleum LLC, Crown Energy Co., PetroWarrior LLC, FHA Investments LLC, and Cher Oil Co. Limited.<\/p>\n White Star\u2019s water disposal wells account for 80 percent of the wells in the affected area, with the other companies making up the remainder.<\/p>\n Cushing is a major oil hub in central Oklahoma, about 50 miles west of Tulsa, with a population of around 8,000.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A group of Payne County residents has filed a class-action lawsuit against five energy companies over the recent earthquakes in Cushing, a city in central Oklahoma. The companies have fracking disposal wells in the area. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a process of extracting oil and gas by injecting pressurized water, sand and chemicals into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":283184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-283183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n ![\"Stonework](\"https:\/\/img.rt.com\/files\/2016.09\/thumbnail\/57cc40ccc36188a15b8b457e.JPG\")
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