Bundy reported in 2001, beginning on PDF page 90 of the Proceedings that the injection well was constructed to dispose of naturally occurring, sodium chloride brine water that infiltrates the Dolores River. The brine is captured with a series of shallow recovery wells along the river where it crosses the floor of the Paradox Valley of Southwestern Colorado. After treatment and filtration, the brine is transferred from the treatment station to the brine injection facility. There, it is diluted with fresh water and injected by a series of Quintuplex plunger pumps into the Leadville fracture system below the massive salt dome that forms the Paradox Valley in Utah.
Injection rates of 200 to 300 gallons of water per minute produce a maximum of 5000-psi surface injection pressure. The Bureau of Reclamation monitors the growth of the natural formation fractures using a series of seismic monitors placed strategically around the area. Fracture growth and the resulting effects on injection pressure have been correlated for the past five years.
This paper is an update of the project after nearly 15 years since installation began. A similar project of lesser scale was patterned after the Paradox project and installed in New Mexico in 1999.
In 1986, the Lower Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Program of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation began the installation of a UIC Class V Injection well to be constructed to Class I Standards. The well was drilled through the Cambrian rocks to a depth of 15,900 fee bg and was completed in the Mississippian Leadville Formation below 14,000 feet bg.
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