INDUSTRIAL-WASTE-DISPOSAL WELLS IN OHIO by Lawrence H. Wickstrom and Mark T. Baranoski

Depending upon your age, you may remember the common, pre-1970's image of industrial waste being openly dumped in American waterways. In Ohio, such practices led to the near ruination of Lake Erie, the burning of the Cuyahoga River, and a proliferation of "No Swimming" signs. Fortunately, discharge of wastes into our surface waters is strictly regulated today and many of our lakes and streams are well on their way to recovery; but this fact doesn't mean those wastes are no longer generated. The disposal of a significant volume of today's liquid industrial-waste products is by deep, subsurface injection wells. Nationwide, more than 8 billion gallons of industrial wastes are annually disposed of in deep injection wells. Such huge volumes of liquid waste, permanently stored beneath our feet, have more and more citizens asking "Where is it all going?"
 
Ohio currently has 13 industrial-waste-disposal wells in operation at five facilities. Seven additional wells have been plugged through the life of this program. Approximately 300 million gallons of waste are injected annually into the deep subsurface strata of our state through the 13 permitted wells. The wastes originate from a variety of industrial processes including steel processing, fertilizer and fungicide production, and plastics production. Some of the newer components of this waste stream are products of other waste-disposal and clean-up methods such as incinerator scrubber water, liquids recovered from remediation of industrial spills, and leachate from solid-waste disposal sites.
 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA) Underground Injection Control (UIC) program recognizes five classes of injection wells. These classes are defined, in part, by the well's relationship to an Underground Source of Drinking Water (USDW). The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) of 1974 designated as a USDW any aquifer whose water contains a concentration of less than 10,000 mg/l of total dissolved solids. The five injection-well classes are:

Class I wells-used for injection of industrial or municipal waste fluids beneath the lowermost formation containing a USDW.
 
Class II wells-used for injection of brines produced by oil and gas production or fluids used for enhanced recovery of oil or natural gas.
 
Class III wells-used for injection of fluids for the extraction of soluble minerals, such as salt-solution mining in northeastern Ohio.
 
Class IV wells-used for injection of hazardous or radioactive wastes into or above a USDW. As of May 11, 1984, all Class IV wells have been banned in the U.S.
 
Class V wells-wells not covered by Classes I through IV. These wells generally are used for the disposal of nonhazardous fluids and include storm-water drainage wells, industrial drainage wells, heat-pump and air-conditioning return wells, cesspools, septic systems, floor drains, and sumps.

Under this system of classification, Ohio's deep industrial-waste-disposal wells are all in the Class I category. The USEPA further subdivides this category on the basis of whether the injectate is classified as hazardous or nonhazardous waste. Three of Ohio's Class I facilities inject hazardous waste, and two inject nonhazardous fluids.
 
Deep injection of industrial wastes has been practiced since the 1950's. However, no federal regulations governed these wells until passage of the 1974 SDWA. Prior to 1974, the individual states regulated the drilling and operation of Class I wells. In Ohio, the Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), Division of Oil and Gas originally had the responsibility of regulating this program. The Division of Geological Survey has had the longest continuous involvement of any state agency with this program, having worked on it in various capacities since 1968.
 
In 1980, the USEPA promulgated most of the current UIC regulations. Under these rules, a state may develop a UIC program and apply for primary responsibility ("primacy") for that program. A state must use the federal regulations as a baseline and may develop more stringent regulations. After passage of the federal regulations, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio EPA) began taking a more pronounced role in the Class I program and in 1985 received primacy from the USEPA. Under current Ohio law, the Ohio EPA is required to have review and technical assistance on all Class I permit applications from the ODNR Divisions of Geological Survey, Oil and Gas, and Water, and, if the proposed well is in a coal-bearing area, the ODNR Division of Mines and Reclamation. The review by these divisions provides the Director of the Ohio EPA with information that relates the Class I well-permit decision to protection of mineral and oil and gas resources, as well as ground-water availability. Comments generated by ODNR are considered by the Director of the Ohio EPA in establishing permit conditions, if it is decided that a permit to drill or a permit to operate should be issued.
 
Under Ohio law, all Class I well permits are issued for not less than four years nor more than six years. The operator must update the permit application and submit it for review prior to the expiration date. The permits for the five Class I facilities in Ohio are staggered so they do not all come up for review at the same time. Review of permit renewals, as well as permit modification requests, new well requests, appeals, or other Class I well issues requires the Survey's Petroleum Geology Group to spend a considerable amount of time on the geology of Class I sites.
 
In 1984, the U.S. Congress passed the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Under this legislation, which has had a large impact on the regulation of some Class I wells, land disposal of all untreated hazardous waste is prohibited after specified dates unless the USEPA has determined that such disposal practices are protective of human health and the environment. These regulations are commonly known as the "Landban Program." Class I well operators have had to submit lengthy documents demonstrating that their sites and practices are safe and that human safety and welfare are protected. Under Landban, the petitioner must demonstrate that, to a reasonable degree of certainty, there will be no migration of hazardous constituents from the injection zone as long as the waste remains hazardous.
 
In 1987, the USEPA, through the Ohio EPA, contracted with the Division of Geological Survey to assist in the review of the Landban petitions for the hazardous-waste-injection sites then operating in Ohio. The federal Landban regulations have strengthened the Ohio program and have allowed a detailed analysis of the geology, construction, and operation of these injection wells.