Company Cautions Against Linking Well, Ohio Quakes Boos, applause and the occasional outburst marked a gathering of about 500 Ohio residents seeking explanations for a series of earthquakes that has hit their area since deep injection drilling came to town. At a news conference after the forum Wednesday, the company said voluntarily shut down an oil and gas wastewater well in Youngstown to study any links to the quakes urged caution in accepting a seismologist's finding that their injection well almost certainly caused the quakes. "It is in the best interest of the community to allow the research process to play out," said Vince Bevacqua, a spokesman for D&L Energy. The well that people are concerned about - rightly or wrongly - is offline and will stay offline until we have answers. Bevacqua said that the seismologist made his judgment from "an office in New York" and that no one has definitively proven the quakes are related to activity at the well. The company has commissioned a study and is depressurizing the well following the shutdown. In a state investigation into 11 earthquakes in the region this year, Columbia University seismologist John Armbruster said that the injection of thousands of gallons of brine wastewater daily into the injection well almost certainly caused the quakes. State officials said they believed the well activity caused pressure to build near a fault line and led to the seismic activity. Ohio State Representative Robert F. Hagan, front, speaks during a community forum to discuss recent seismic activity related to deep wastewater injection wells, in Youngstown, Ohio on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta) Close Armbruster's finding intensified the debate over hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, used to extract natural gas from underground shale. The Youngstown well took wastewater from all sorts of drilling in the oil and gas industry. It is an injection well, not a well for extracting oil and gas. Bevacqua said the company hopes its own study will provide different feedback. The study has not been started yet and Bevacqua was not able to provide a timetable. Many residents who attended the Wednesday forum experienced the 4.0 magnitude New Year's Eve quake, which led to Gov. John Kasich calling a moratorium on injection drilling in the region. Several said fear and concern brought them out. "Your saltwater is radioactive poison!" shouted one participant. Retiree Bob Gray, a lifelong resident of Youngstown, said regulators who attended the event didn't provide satisfactory answers. "I feel like my intelligence has been insulted," said Gray, 70. He described the forum as "a dog and pony show." Gray and others questioned why wastewater from fracking is being shipped into Ohio for disposal when nearby Pennsylvania and New York don't want it. Pennsylvania drillers are recycling much of the water they use, but Ohio has a contract to accept a portion of the Pennsylvania wastewater. Bill Kinney, a petroleum executive representing the Ohio Oil & Gas Association at the forum, said the shipments aren't unusual. "There are all types of interstate commerce, that happens to be one of them," he said. Pennsylvania is not Afghanistan. It's the state next to us. Joseph Planey, 65, a Boardman resident who works as a consultant, said the public meeting was a good start. "More detail needs to be gotten into," he said. I think the depth of the problem can't be addressed in a two-hour meeting.