Was lack of government regulation at fault?

It’s a common complaint these days: government regulations have gotten out of hand (see here and here), they’re stifling the American economy, “killing economic growth.” Generalities like those are hard to refute, or prove for that matter. So let’s take a look at specific regulations which were designed to protect the public from injection wells used to dispose of fracking wastes … but because they weren’t comprehensive, when it came to earthquakes, they were no better than, well, no regulation.

In 2011, from March to November, nine small earthquakes were reported in and around Youngstown, Ohio. That’s more than one earthquake per month. All were of 2.7 magnitude (Mw)