Republic Services has applied for two permits to allow them to inject leachate — the liquid waste from a landfill — from the Newton County Landfill into the ground.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to approve a request from Republic Services for issuance of two Class I underground injection permits for two proposed new wells located within the Newton County Landfill.

An injection well is used to place fluid underground into porous geologic formations. These underground formations may range from deep sandstone or limestone to a shallow soil layer. Injected fluids may include water, wastewater, brine (saltwater), water mixed with chemicals and leachate.

Leachate, who many call "garbage juice" has several noxious chemicals and elements that have to be filtered out, including ammonia, zinc, lead, mercury, and other heavy metals, as well as “whatever else that ends up in the landfill," stated the source, who asked to remain anonymous.

The EPA seems to think that this is safe, however:

"There is no certainty at all in any of this, and whoever tells you the opposite is not telling you the truth," said Stefan Finsterle, a leading hydrogeologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who specializes in understanding the properties of rock layers and modeling how fluid flows through them. "When you do these types of deep injection wells, you have changed the system underground with pressure and temperature and fracturing, so you don't know how it will behave."

A ProPublica review of well records, case histories, and government summaries of more than 220,000 well inspections found that structural failures inside injection wells are routine. Over a 3-year period, one well integrity violation was issued for every six deep injection wells examined — more than 17,000 violations nationally. More than 7,000 wells showed signs that their walls were leaking. Records also showed wells were frequently operated in violation of safety regulations and under conditions that greatly increase the risk of fluid leakage and the threat of water contamination.