Priority Area 12:
Underground Injection Control (UIC) Reports

 

The Underground Injection Control (UIC) Program is responsible for regulating the construction, operation, permitting, and closure of injection wells that place fluids underground for storage or disposal. EPA is required by the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to develop minimum federal requirements that protect public health by preventing injection wells from contaminating underground sources of drinking water.

Under the parameters of SDWA and UIC federal regulations, EPA instructs states regulators and regions, as well as owners and operators of injection wells, on how to safely operate injection wells to prevent contamination of underground drinking water resources.  EPA offers extensive guidance on the UIC program, as well as grants allocated to state, territorial, and tribal UIC programs to help them enforce the minimum federal UIC requirements.

States asked to eliminate duplicative UIC reporting, reduce the frequency of reporting, and reduce the data elements requested.  Additional concerns were that the UIC program is chronically under-funded, and is a relatively small grant included in the state Performance Partnership Grants (PPGs).

EPA has responded to the states’ recommendations by creating a new central UIC database, which was launched in December 2007.  Testing and implementation of the new UIC database is underway, in collaboration with an integrated project team (IPT) composed of five states and seven Regional Direct Implementation (DI) programs. The IPT is collecting necessary information in order to eliminate current versions of paper and electronic reports and streamlining data elements. Additionally, a joint State-EPA Data Management Steering Committee is overseeing implementation to assure data quality and completeness. While testing is underway, early participants are still required to submit official reports in the traditional format.

EPA believes it is critical to build its capacity to access UIC well-specific information that is efficient, accurate, and usable.  Once fully populated, the database will be used to respond to information requests from EPA management, Congress, and other governmental leaders and the public. Additionally, with the UIC program beginning its critical efforts to develop a national regulation for geological sequestration, EPA will need information that can be centrally housed in the database to oversee sequestration activities.  For more on the proposal on federal requirements for carbon dioxide (CO₂) geologic sequestration wells, please see the July 25, 2008 Federal Register notice (PDF) (51 pp, 360KB, About PDF).

As of September 2008, EPA’s goal is to have all UIC primacy programs joined to the new UIC database by 2012.