How about we just store some produced water in holding tanks instead of running it down injection wells? It's already unusable for consumption.
Of course, other than the ridiclous cost of storage facilities and trucking to the job site.
I really don't like using groundwater for steam injection or fracing. Hard to replace the millions of gallons used yearly of fresh water. Pump it downhole and it becomes polluted produced water.
The problem is that nearby fresh is much cheaper than stored, trucked produced water.
Just my 2c