Hazardous-waste Injection Wells Stir Controversy

On the 25th anniversary of the U.S. EPA's hazardous waste underground injection control (UIC) program and the Safe Drinking Water Act, industry tensions are mounting over whether the two programs can coincide.

According to the not-for-profit Groundwater Protection Council, 60% of all land-disposed liquid hazardous waste in the U.S. is injected underground via deep Class 1 UIC injection wells, and most of the companies using hazardous-waste injection wells are Fortune 500 companies. DuPont alone injects more than 1.5-bil gal of hazardous waste per year. (http://site.net )

These injection wells are primarily located in EPA regions 4, 5, and 6, with the majority being in Texas, Florida, and Louisiana.

"The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) amendments in 1986 and 1996 have generated stricter right-to-know provisions driving stricter reporting requirements, and we have a concern for all potential pollution of source drinking-water supplies," said John H. Sullivan, deputy executive director of the American Water Works Association (http://www.awwa.org).

"The EPA's UIC program needs a lot of looking into, and SDWA violations from Class 1 UIC wells' contaminating underground sources of drinking water [USDW] in Dade County, Florida, are not uncommon conditions," says Sullivan. (See: http://www.ficus.usf.edu/exhibit/injection.html.)

"There is some really toxic stuff going done these Class 1 UIC wells," he said.

The Chemical Manufactures Association (CMA), however, is not convinced that the current EPA Class 1 UIC program is a threat to underground sources of drinking water (http://www.cma.org).

"We have 18 companies which own and operate 80 Class 1 UIC wells, and for these companies it is their sole source of disposal for hazardous waste," says David Mentall, manager of Environmental Issues and UIC staff executive for CMA.

The firms include BP Amoco, Monsanto, Solutia, Cytec, and DuPont—the last having the largest number of Class 1 UIC wells, according to Mentall.

He added as an aside that "We have no significant concerns from a regulatory standpoint, but there are a number of civil action suits still pending [one involving DuPont in Louisiana, and two other cases in Texas] which we are watching very closely because they could set an astronomical monetary effect precedent."

Not all CMA members use Class 1 UIC wells.

"Back in the 1970s, management did not believe Class 1 UIC wells for hazardous waste was right, and they developed a corporate policy against them," said Mike Rio, Global Director for Environment, Health and Safety for Operations at Dow Chemical (http://www.dow.com)

"Our last hazardous Class 1 UIC well was closed in the early eighties, and we are now reliant on incineration, recycling, and our waste-reduction program," he said.

Concept challenged

Regulatory officials and environmentalists advance that the EPA's UIC program is weakly enforced and poorly monitored.

Corporations are required to report to the public specific Class 1 injection releases and inventory under federal Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) regulations (http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/tri/whatis.htm).

However, "In many cases there isn't much monitoring of UIC wells for violations except where a problem potential is expected [for example, Florida]," said Bruce Kobelski, UIC Team Leader for the EPA Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water (http://www.epa.gov/OGWDW/uic.html).

"There is nothing in TRI which requires monitoring of the wells," said Paul Orum, coordinator of the not-for-profit Working Group on Community Right to Know (http://www.rtk.net)."

He said, "CMA would like to see status quo for UIC regulations, but when you have a Class 1 UIC well, its very easy to dump everything down there and create a disincentive to pollution prevention

"There are roughly 600 Class 1 hazardous waste wells in the U.S., but we at the EPA can't ban violating facilities because permits are in most cases a regional state function," said Kobelski.

The not-for-profit Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation (LEAF) has been challenging Class 1 UIC wells through the U.S. courts for more than 18 years, contending that underground injection of waste does not lend itself to pollution prevention.

Donald Sutherland resides in Hopkinton, MA, and is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists. He can be reached at 508-497-3676.