Legal framework and enforced regulations play a pivotal role in deep well injection, but there are times when regulators turn a blind eye to enforcement, resulting in risk to health and lives. Case in point, an explosion in January 2003 at a Class 2 injection well site in Rosharon, Texas that claimed the lives of three people.
A ProPublica report showed that a breakdown in the regulations governing how toxic waste is handled was what caused the tragedy. Although the over 150,000 Class 2 wells in 33 states are not as stringently regulated as those that store more hazardous waste material, ProPublica investigations revealed that safeguards and violations are frequently overlooked at these dumping sites. This, geoscientist and injection experts say, is a high risk to water sources which will eventually reach crisis stage if left unchecked. They are adamant that all must be followed and checks and balances must be carried out before, during and after the drilling of the these wells, and that careful monitoring of the waste has to be carried out in order to avoid underground to surface migration and contamination of water sources.
Check out the original article here: https://www.propublica.org/article/trillion-gallon-loophole-lax-rules-for-drillers-that-inject-pollutants