Disasters

"McDONALD, Ohio - Officials said Saturday they believe the latest earthquake activity in northeast Ohio is related to the injection of wastewater into the ground near a fault line, creating enough pressure to cause seismic activity.

The brine wastewater comes from drilling operations that use the so-called fracking process to extract gas from underground shale. But Ohio Department of Natural Resources Director Jim Zehringer said during a news teleconference that fracking is not causing the quakes."

"US prosecutors are readying criminal charges against British oil giant BP employees over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident that led to the catastrophic Gulf oil spill, The Wall Street Journal reported online.

"The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has misled Congress about the effectiveness of a nearly five-year-old program that is meant to secure the nation’s chemical facilities against potential terrorist attacks, says Sen. Susan M. Collins (R-Maine).

"State insurance regulators are feeling pressure to address climate change before a federal counterpart established last year moves in on their territory."

Congress' drive to cut spending could increase the threat to US citizens' from bioterrorism as well as more common epidemics, a new study says.

"Nigerian coastal and fishing communities were on Thursday put on alert after Shell admitted to an oil spill that is likely to be the worst in the area for a decade, according to government officials."

"Decommissioning Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will take three or four decades, Japan's government said on Wednesday as it unveiled plans for the next phase of a huge and costly cleanup of the tsunami-wrecked complex."

"TOKYO -- Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan today declared that the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been brought to a state of cold shutdown, turning a corner in the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

'The nuclear reactors have reached a state of cold shutdown and therefore we can now confirm that we have come to the end of the accident phase of the actual reactors,' Prime Minister Noda told a news conference.

"The Environmental Projection Agency on Friday said it is giving $500,000 to the city of Joplin, Missouri to clean up property contaminated by lead in a devastating May 22 tornado."

"Despite a long history of accidents, and a stack of warnings from safety investigators, there are still thousands of miles of antiquated, leak-prone, cast-iron pipelines running under the streets of Pennsylvania cities and towns. Some are more than 100 years old."

Joseph Tanfani and Craig R. McCoy report the last of a four-part "Battle Lines" series for the Philadelphia Inquirer's Deep Drill reports December 18, 2011.