Underground Injection Control Initiative Welcome to our Underground Injection Control Initiative LEAF protects your drinking water and marine resources from underground injection of hazardous, industrial, municipal and radioactive wastes. To do this, LEAF promotes pollution prevention, water conservation, and accountability for pollution. To protect the drinking water supplies of Alabama and Florida from contamination imposed by injection wells.
Underground injection is a widely used waste disposal method.
Injection wells send wastes underground into, above, and below underground drinking water supplies. An injection well is a dug hole, or bored, drilled, or driven shaft that is deeper than it is wide, into which liquid waste is pumped. Government records show that sewage has moved into underground sources of drinking water. Alabama currently regulates coalbed methane gas wells as an injection activity rather than as Class II injection wells. Approximately 5,000 coalbed methane gas wells have been permitted and drilled in Tuscaloosa, Walker, Jefferson, Shelby, Bibb, Hale, Greene, and Pickens Counties of Alabama.