Disposal Wells Shut Down After Earthquakes Rattle Crescent

Two wastewater disposal wells near Crescent have now been shut down and another well's volume reduced by 50 percent following Monday's earthquakes.

Security cameras from the Hometown Foods in Crescent caught the 4.5-magnitude earthquake on surveillance video.  It showed the quake shaking food off the shelves and shaking up employees. 

“It was very scary,” said Lois Gillette who works at the store.  “It’s making everybody really nervous, I know it’s making me nervous.”

After multiple quakes hit the area Monday, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission contacted the operators of the three nearest disposal wells.  All three wells are within approximately three miles of the epicenter and fit the high risk profile. 

“We always look for high volume, deep disposal wells and all three of these are fairly high volume based on their injection reports and they are deep. They are Arbuckle disposal wells,” Matt Skinner, of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, said.

The operators of all three wells volunteered to take action and Bob Mills Sky News 9 HD was overhead as workers shut down the wells.

“They will not be able to go back to the way things were without permission from us,” Skinner said.

That's a big relief for Gillette and her fellow workers who said they have been seeing an increase in earthquakes over just the past couple weeks.

“If it works, I’m all for it if it stops the earthquakes,” said Hometown Foods assistant manager Jerry Carey. “The 4.5 earthquake was not on my to-do list.”

Skinner said they are looking into if any of those wells have increased production in the last couple weeks.  Devon Energy operates one of those disposal wells and Stephens Production operates the other two.