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

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/