"When a CO2 well leaks and potentially endangers the public, who is responsible for informing community members?"
"On Sept. 13, Decatur, Illinois, city councilperson David Horn found out a monitoring well at a carbon capture and storage site in his community was leaking. He did not find out through an internal council meeting, nor an emergency phone call from the city manager or an alert from environmental regulators. He found out like most other people did, through an article in E&E News.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) wells are a relatively new addition to the American carbon storage gamut. The well that leaked in Decatur was located at a plant owned by Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM), a massive grain processing corporation, where wells store carbon dioxide emissions from the ADM ethanol plant deep underground. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, these projects, known as Class VI wells, involve companies injecting CO2, in the form of a supercritical fluid, into bedrock for “long-term storage.”
In August, the EPA issued ADM a notice of violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act. They noted that ADM “failed to meet the requirements of the Permit and the [Underground Injection Control] regulations” due to the movement of “formation fluids into unauthorized zones,” a failure to follow their emergency plan and a failure to monitor the well."
Nina Elkadi reports for Inside Climate News October 3, 2024.
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