Shocked, Shocked!! ADM's "Carbon Capture" Plant Violates Pollution Laws; Corrosion Problems After Only 7 Years Online

[hatrack]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found multiple Safe Drinking Water Act violations at the nation’s first carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) storage project, PoliticoPro’s E&E News reported today. The Decatur, IL, project, run by Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM), violated rules meant to protect against leaks of captured carbon, the EPA wrote in a notice of violation issued on August 14th.

The EPA said it had inspected three ADM wells in mid-June — one used for storing captured carbon dioxide and two used to monitor for leaks and other problems. ADM told E&E News that the violations relate to corrosion in one of the two monitoring wells — a problem that ADM said it had discovered back in March. ADM was the first company to get a Class VI injection well permit from the U.S.’s EPA. The company started injecting carbon in Illinois at the end of April 2017, making the site a little over seven years old.

Because of the risks captured carbon poses, including risks to the nation’s groundwater supplies, federal rules generally require Class VI wells to be monitored the entire time they’re in use, plus 50 years after — so the discovery of issues at ADM’s project this early on could be a sign of significant problems to come as carbon capture and monitoring wells age.

“This incident puts an exclamation point on concerns communities across the country have been raising for years about the dangers the CCS industry poses to public safety and drinking water,” Food & Water Watch policy director Jim Walsh said in a statement today responding to the news. “Waiting at least a month to notify the public of this violation is especially egregious given the major health and safety risks associated with carbon dioxide contamination in air and water,” Walsh added. “The lack of transparency from EPA about this leak is alarming but unfortunately in line with a failure of federal oversight for the entire carbon capture industry.”

EDIT

https://www.desmog.com/2024/09/13/adm-epa-violations-discovered-at-nations-first-carbon-capture-and-storage-project/

[Midnight Writer]

1. "Carbon capture" is a mistake. It simply pumps the carbon into our aquifer rather than in the air.

Decatur sits right on top of America's biggest fresh groundwater source. This is the water that allows our soil to be fertile and our crops to grow. Pumping carbon into it is insane, IMO.

AMD makes their products from crops grown here, and they make a ton of money from it. I think they are killing the goose that lays their golden eggs. Polluted groundwater coupled with global climate change will, over time, damage the Midwest's crop producing capacity.

[hunter]

2. What is wrong with our political system that we can't shut down this fuel ethanol scam?

Aside from burning fossil fuels agriculture is the most environmentally destructive activity humans engage in. There is nothing "green" about farming. We should be doing our best to minimize it.

Some of the most biologically desolate places on earth are vast acreages of corn grown for fuel ethanol and industrial meat production.

In a better world we would be buying out these farmers and rewilding this land.