Boreholes or tubewells for ...

Boreholes or tubewells for drinking water, with handpumps or diesel pumps (or similar) to draw up the water will not cause earthquakes. The amount of water taken out is very small compared to the reserve of groundwater available in most instances. Occasionally, large numbers of boreholes into unconsolidated sediments (sands, peats, silts) can cause minor problems with subsidence of buildings, but not earthquakes.

Earthquakes are usually deep seated geological failures of rocks under stress or tension, below the depth to which the influence of a drinking water borehole would penetrate. There is some evidence of drilling for shale gas causing minor earthquakes, but it is the high pressure forcing of fluids into the gas-bearing strata that causes the shift, not the drilling itself.