NILES — While officials with the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District aren’t prepared to connect cracks in the Meander Dam to earthquake activity, a group at a Niles City Council meeting implored city officials to take a stand against a nearby injection well.

If American Water Management Services, owner of a well along state state Route 169 north of Niles, begins operating again, the city of Niles and others in the Valley will become a “science experiment,” said Dr. Raymond E. Beiersdorfer with Frackfree Mahoning Valley and a geology professor at Youngstown State University.

The MVSD is funding a study of cracks in the dam and some of its buildings, board member Matt Blair said. The cracks could be the result of earth settling, but Blair said “there is no way to say what caused them.”

The nearly $10,000 study will help the plant’s overseers plan around shifts in the earth during any new construction, Blair said.

“It is hard to attribute it to any one factor, but we want to ensure, if there are any issues from ground settling or shifting in the future, we allow for some movement in our construction technique so we don’t keep seeing the problem, regardless of what is causing the ground to shift,” Blair said.

MVSD intends to spend an estimated $27 million to address cosmetic and structural problems with the dam and $1 million on repair designs, chief engineer Tom Holloway said.

About 220,000 people get their water from the plants, including McDonald, Niles and Youngstown — the two cities sell some of the water to other communities.

The cracks are alarming, considering the injection wells and record of seismic activity, Beiersdorfer said.

John Williams, also with Frackfree Mahoning Valley, said seismic data shows earthquake activity in the area coincides with injection well operations, and if the AWMS well starts up again, the dam containing the Meander Reservoir is at risk.

The pressurized injected fluids can migrate from the well, finding new and old faults and cause shakes, Beiersdorfer said. The well is only 2.9 miles from the dam, he said.

The more injections there are, the more likely quakes are to occur, Beiersdorfer said.

Others with the group spoke out, warning of cracks in homes that wouldn’t be covered under typical homeowners insurance, and urging council members and the mayor to use their titles to pen letters to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and Governor John Kasich urging that the well remain dormant.

ODNR, which regulates class II injection wells, ordered AWMS to shut down the well in September 2014 following a 2.1-magnitude earthquake on Aug. 31, 2014. A shallow well that was also shut down at the site was permitted to resume operations. AWMS fought ODNR and the Ohio Oil and Gas Commission back and forth in court to get the well reopened.

In December, Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Kimberly Cocroft ordered AWMS and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to each submit a proposal outlining parameters under which the well would resume operations. She said the company deserved a chance to address any issues ODNR has with operations.