Thousands of gallons of a toxic chemical that spilled into a West Virginia waterway in January are now being injected deep underground in northern Ohio.

Thousands of gallons of a toxic chemical that spilled into a West Virginia waterway in January are now being injected deep underground in northern Ohio.

About 50,000 gallons of wastewater containing 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or MCHM, a coal-cleansing chemical � some diluted, some undiluted � have been put into an injection well in Sandusky County, according to Ohio and West Virginia environmental officials.

A Freedom Industries storage tank leaked 7,500 gallons of MCHM into the Elk River in West Virginia in January, triggering drinking-water bans for 300,000 residents of the greater Charleston area. The spill eventually reached the Ohio River, where the water smelled like licorice all the way to Cincinnati.

More than 13 billion gallons of chemicals, tainted wastewater and industrial waste have been pumped into 20 Class I injection wells throughout Ohio over the years, according to the state Environmental Protection Agency.

�It�s a legal and highly regulated process,� said Ohio EPA spokeswoman Dina Pierce.

Ohio has four of the six classes of injection wells available in the U.S.

Class I wells are meant specifically for hazardous wastes, industrial non-hazardous liquids and municipal wastewater such as sewage. Ten of Ohio�s 20 wells are still active, and they are among 680 active Class I wells in the United States. Four belong to Vickery Environmental Services in Vickery in Sandusky County.

During the past 30 years, more than 4 trillion gallons of industrial waste have been pumped underground, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says. That�s enough to fill Hoover Reservoir, northeast of Westerville, 192 times.

In 2008, three companies injected 247.5 million gallons of waste into deep wells in Ohio. The waste included hydrochloric acid, nitric acid and cyanide.

West Virginia does not have any Class I injection wells, according to Kelley Gillenwater, spokeswoman for the state�s Department of Environmental Protection.

Vickery has the only commercial Class I wells in the state. AK Steel in Middletown and Ineos in Lima also operate Class I wells but dispose only of wastes generated by their own manufacturing plants.

Between 1976 and 2013, Vickery injected about 1.61 billion gallons of waste into seven Class I wells � three of which are no longer used.

�Injecting hazardous waste into the ground is just wrong, especially at Vickery,� said Teresa Mills of Community Health and Environmental Justice.

One of Vickery�s wells that is still operating had major defects, according to a 2008 audit by the U.S. EPA.

�This same well was reworked in the 1980s due to failure at the same interval. Ohio EPA had identified these same issues and has been working with the facility to address them,� the audit says.

The wastewater from Freedom is not considered hazardous by U.S. EPA standards, Gillenwater said. But its chemical levels are considered toxic.

About 227,000 gallons of storm-water runoff that are being collected at the Freedom spill site have been hauled to two wastewater-treatment facilities in North Carolina and Ohio � one of those being EnviroTank Cleaning in Belpre in Washington County along the Ohio River. This storm-water runoff is all the snowmelt and rainwater that came into contact with potentially contaminated soil at the spill site.

The Ohio EPA oversees Class I wells. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources oversees Class II wells, which include those that inject fracking waste deep underground. Ohio has more than 170 Class II wells.

Dispatch Reporter Jennifer Smith Richards contributed to this story.



jwhite@dispatch.com