- [Announcer] This program is made possible in part by the Backlund Charitable Trust established to educate and create awareness of environmental issues.

- Welcome to our latest edition of "EcoWatch" on WTVP.

I'm Mark Welp.

This program is dedicated to bringing you the latest environmental stories impacting our area and the state of Illinois.

We're going to introduce you to people finding unique ways to make the land of Lincoln a better place for mankind and animals by protecting plants, water, soil, and crops.

Let's get started.

(bright dramatic music) (bright dramatic music continues) Learn why some people are worried that pollution being stored underground in central Illinois could have devastating effects on our water supply.

We'll tell you how energy companies are preparing to decarbonize the electric grid.

Plus protecting our beautiful state insects.

And we introduce you to two more endangered animals in Illinois.

But first, a million people in 14 central Illinois counties rely on the underground Mahomet Aquifer for their drinking water.

And there are some people worried that the aquifer could be contaminated by, ironically, a method of containing pollution called carbon capture and storage.

Pam Richart is the co-director of Eco-Justice Collaborative, and Andrew Rehn is the climate policy director of the Prairie Rivers Network.

They join us now via Zoom.

Andrew, first of all, let's get some of the science out of the way here.

Tell us what an aquifer is and and why it's so important.

- Yeah, so we're talking about the Mahomet Aquifer, which is a drinking water aquifer.

Aquifer is just a layer under us, geological layer under us that stores water.

Typically you would call a freshwater aquifer and a drinking water aquifer.

But there's water below us in lots of different layers.

And for the Mahomet Aquifer, it's about 500 feet down here on the east side of the aquifer over near you in Peoria, on the west side of the aquifer, it's actually the surface aquifer.

So that means that when it rains, the water that goes and seeps into the ground will eventually seep down into the Mahomet Aquifer over there.

Near us, it's confined, and that means that when there's like a clay layer above it, so maybe it's about 500 foot down, so maybe 400 foot down, there's the clay layer that's stopping rain from directly going in, although there are recharge areas.

So places that get into that confined aquifer from outside of not just the typical pathway, I suppose.

There are also saline aquifers, so that's like a salt water..

If you go much deeper, you hit areas that are salt water, and so that's another underground formation that has water, but it's saline and salty, typically very salty.

So we don't use those for drinking.

And it's all geological layers under us that have been laid down by glaciations and all that kind of stuff.

But the Mahomet Aquifer is really special for its ability to store large quantities of water and as a regional resource for central Illinois.

- And some of the controversy we've heard in the last few years about carbon capture as companies wanna liquefy CO2, so it doesn't get into the air, they're actually doing this to prevent pollution.

They wanna inject it down in the ground, a mile down, and Illinois is a prime spot for doing this.

Now, Pam, we already know that ADM indicator is doing this right now.

Tell us what your concerns are about doing that in this area.

- Thank, Mark.

I think that it's important for people to know that this technology is still relatively new.

It's been practiced mostly for enhanced oil recovery, but here in Illinois and in the country, ADM happens to be the only USEPA Class VI well project approved and operational.

So, ADM still considers itself to be a research and development project, and they've stored about 4.5 million tons of CO2 to date.

And it leaked, not just once, but twice.

So for many of us, we're looking at the failures that were had there that included some technical failures, some operational failures, lack of oversight by the EPA, and we're saying, you know, this technology isn't quite ready for a primetime, I don't think, but especially for storing it under a sole-source aquifer, like the Mahomet, which is the only sole-source aquifer we have in Illinois.

So if the CO2 were to leak, it could contaminate our water supply.

I'm not saying it would contaminate the entire aquifer, but it would contaminate it much like we saw happen with the Peoples Gas leak, right?

There'd be pockets of people that would be affected, and it would release, potentially release harmful toxic metals that are harmful to human health.

And can cause cancer and liver damage and anemia and kidney failure and all host of things.

So because we had the leaks on a project that is touted as the success in this country, the first one of its kind that, I think, has been able to store what they consider to be storing CO2 at a commercial scale.

And it failed.

We're especially concerned about implementing this technology in the footprint of the Mahomet Aquifer.

- Before we go any further, I want to ask both of you and get your comments, are you, and, Pam, you spoke to this a little bit, are you against this way of capturing and storing CO2 in general, or is it just the fact that it's this close to our major water source?

- I'll speak to that first, maybe...

Many of you know that, or maybe of your viewers know that we have a regulatory bill that was passed in the state of Illinois to give additional protections for this technology.

I was part of that.

So I think that there is an opportunity to look at this as a suite of options to address climate change.

But here in particular, while the technology is still, as Sally Greenberg consultant to ADM said, "lessons learned with ADM." If we're still learning lessons, we should not be storing CO2 under the Mahomet Aquifer where it potentially could leak and contaminate our water.

- [Mark] And what do you say, Andrew?

- Yeah, I would share a similar sentiment.

Broadly, this is something that's in a suite of technologies that we're using to tackle climate change, which is a very real important issue and we need to reduce carbon emissions.

But is the scale that this is being elevated as a solution appropriate?

I would feel like the answer is no there.

And we certainly cannot risk our water for the sake of sequestering that carbon.

But in the bigger picture, you know, I think that we should be, you know, with the money that's been invested in this, the money that's being invested, taxpayer dollars through tax credits to these companies, I would've liked to see that go to other climate solutions, things that are more scalable, things like renewables, battery storage versus doubling down on a technology that's here to let us keep burning fossil fuels, which seems like a mistake in direct, but it's not a long term vision really.

- I wanna talk about ADM a little bit, and they are certainly not the only company that wants to get in on the CCS projects in this area, but I wanna read something from Reuters.

The title of the article, "ADM Violates US Water Laws Permit After Leak at Carbon Captured Project."

The USEPA has found that Archer-Daniels-Midland violated federal safe drinking water rules and its underground injection permit with a leak at the first major US underground carbon sequestration facility in Illinois that was confirmed by ADM in September.

And now ADM also talking with the EPA saying, a July inspection of the site found that carbon dioxide injected into the subsurface, flowed into unauthorized zones, and that the company failed to follow an emergency and remediation plan and/or to monitor the well in accordance with his permit.

Now, ADM responded to that EPA notice and they said they detected some corrosion in one of its two deep monitoring wells and subsequently plugged it and reported it to the agency.

That's according to a copy of the letter seen by Reuters.

And as far as what ADM is saying about this, their spokesperson, Jackie Anderson, said, "At no time was there any impact to the surface or groundwater sources or any threat to public health.

We continue to be confident in the safety, security, and effectiveness of CCS as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology and its potential to bring new industries and economic opportunities to the entire state of Illinois."

Now, in your opinions and from what you've seen, is ADM downplaying what's happened with these leaks?

- I think that there's probably, it's probably fair to say the leaks were small, but I still think there's a whole lot of unanswered questions that that should be addressed and need to be considered.

First of all, no matter how many regulations you have, what we saw at the ADM site shows, underscores the kinds of concerns that we have that could happen there.

ADM used the best technology available, and their technology failed.

It allowed CO2 to move into one from the underground of below the cap and above the cap into the unauthorized zone.

They used the best available steel, and when it came in contact with the saline aquifer, it corroded, right?

It failed to follow its operational plan.

When it plugged the one well, one of two monitoring wells, it should have shut down injection and did not do that.

The EPA, on the other hand, should have been issuing, in my view, a notice of violation when they were operating with just one of two required wells, and they should have shut it down.

So I mean, those are, in my view, our view, I think, some pretty large problems that show the lack of readiness for this technology and the kinds of problems that can have and happen with operators who have less access to resources through Prairie Research Institute, for example, and less opportunity to quote, "learn from their mistakes."

And that's what they're saying.

They're saying, they've had mistakes, they're learning from mistakes.

There's still a question in my mind as to whether or not that CO2 might be able to find pathways for escaping through other abandoned wells that they've identified.

So yes, I would say at this point in time, drinking water is not compromised, but at this point in time, it's the industry who's doing the modeling, ADM, not a third party who's doing the watch-dogging for this.

And so I really would like to see us be a bit more forceful about insisting, the EPA should insist that someone besides ADM take a look at this and do that modeling and provide an assessment.

- Well, just to follow up on that, another article from Reuters just a few weeks after that, that came out the beginning of October, titled "ADM Pauses CO2 Injection at Carbon Capture Storage Site After Finding Potential Leak."

So they're saying they found a leak, again, spokesperson saying that there's no risk to the surface or groundwater or to the public health, but the injection has been paused at the site, while the company conducts additional tests.

Andrew, I'll ask this of you, with ADM doing what they're doing and so many other companies wanting to do the same, what is the best way to oversee this, in your opinion?

- Yeah, and just to give some perspective here, the ADM site, the current site that we're talking about, is not below the aquifer.

It's about five miles away.

And the threat to that wasn't about the threat to the aquifer, but to what it demonstrates is sort of a red alarm of a great example of the way these things fail along the way.

And when we're talking about storage of CO2, we're talking about something that's literally supposed to be from now until forever.

So these companies need to be able to not have a problem from now until forever.

And they also are proposing to do it.

As you noted, a lot more companies are coming into the game.

This is gonna be happening at a scale, already what's proposed below the aquifer is 50 times the volume of what they've done in the entire decade-plus that they've stored CO2 at Decatur.

So the scale's larger, the timeframe is really long.

And so when we look at a problem like this, it kind of becomes a red alert.

And we think about the Mahomet Aquifer, the sole source drinking water aquifer for much of central Illinois, it's just not worth the risk.

We could just do it somewhere else.

We have good regulations in place for protection to bill that passed, CCS act is good in situations where some amount of risk might be tolerable, but for the Mahomet Aquifer, that risk isn't tolerable.

It just doesn't make sense.

Why would you risk your water supply?

And so that I think is, you know, what sort of protections we need in place.

For the Mahomet Aquifer, the protection we need in place is certaintym and certainty only comes in the form of a ban.

- And two, where it is possible, we're asking counties to do a countywide ban.

And Dewitt County has already done this and they've ban sequestration in the aquifer.

Ford County just did this in November, and Champaign County is in the process of finishing its moratorium that will allow it to do the work it needs to do to prepare an ordinance that would do the same thing, allow sequestration in some parts of the county, but ban it from under the aquifer.

- I know this issue is gonna be going on for a little while, and right now, how do people find out more about it?

- Well, we have a website ProtectTheMahomet.com that people can go to.

They can sign up to be on our email list.

They can find out about events that are happening that will be posted on the website.

There will be events, I believe, happening after we reconvene the counties and municipalities across the Mahomet Aquifer footprint.

- Speaking of important water sources, the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission is leading an initiative to study the health of the Kickapoo Creek watershed.

The watershed encompasses more than 300 square miles in Peoria, Knox, and Fulton Counties.

The Planning Commission is working with an environmental consulting firm on the initiative, and there are several ways you can give input.

The group friends of Kickapoo Creek has an online survey you can take about the watershed, and those results will be given to the Planning commission.

You can go to FriendsOfKickapooCreek.org to take the survey.

And there are also two open houses.

One, Saturday, February 15th from 11 to one at the Lincoln Library in Peoria, and Wednesday, March 19th from five to 7:00 PM at the Peoria County Farm Bureau Building in Peoria.

As Illinois moves towards its clean energy goals, the state has approved multi-year grid plans with the two largest energy providers: ComEd and Ameren.

The Illinois Commerce Commission approved Ameren Illinois's refiled multi-year grid plan with modifications.

The commission approved $83 million in investments and system improvements needed to strengthen power grid reliability and support the ongoing electrification of the state's power system.

Ameren had asked for 333 million in spending.

The ICCS decision reduced Ameren's rate increase request by 7% for an overall increase of $309 million over the next four years.

Ameren's grid plan is consolidated with its multi-year rate plan to determine which system maintenance and upgrade costs can be passed on to rate payers at a reasonable cost.

Rate increases for Ameren customers haven't been determined yet, but will vary based on service class and energy usage.

An Ameren official says additional strategic investments will be imperative to facilitate the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind and to meet the goals of the climate and Equitable Jobs Act.

The goal of the legislation is to decarbonize the electric grid by 2045.

It also requires the state's largest investor-owned electric utilities to file grid plans designed to accelerate progress toward Illinois's clean energy goals and hold electric companies accountable for their performance.

Ameren Illinois delivers energy to 1.2 million customers in Illinois.

Need to get rid of hazardous household waste, but don't want to drive hours to a collection facility or wait for a one day collection event in your area?

Well, a more convenient option is on the way.

You're looking at the plans for a collection facility on the north side of Urbana.

The nonprofit group, Champaign County Environmental Stewards, is raising money to build the 5,800-square foot facility.

It would be open to all Illinois residents.

The closest permanent collection facilities are in Naperville, as you can see here, or near St. Louis in Wood River.

Household hazardous waste includes oil-based paint, paint thinner, cleaning products, pesticides, mercury, gas, motor oil, antifreeze, household batteries, and fluorescent light bulbs.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that each US household produces 20 pounds of hazardous waste every year.

And every household stores about 100 pounds of hazardous waste in basements, garages, and sheds.

Champaign County environmental stewards has raised about 42% of the $2.85 million needed to build the facility.

The group is looking for donations and grants and hopes to break ground this year.

For more information, you can visit their website, CCENVSTEW.org.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is pushing for monarch butterflies to gain a federally protected status.

It comes as Illinoisans have been making moves to protect the species, which is the state's official insect.

Population assessments show monarch butterflies have declined by nearly 60% from 2023 to 2024.

Joanna Hernandez from our sister station, WTTW, explains why the insects are important to the Prairie State and their cultural significance.

- They are an insect pollinator, and most people think about pollination in conjunction with honeybees and bumblebees because they are so very important to our food crops.

However, butterflies can be very important to our wildflower populations.

- [Joanna] Brookfield Zoo works with the Illinois Monarch Project to help protect the insects population through educational services, conservation efforts, and meeting goals to plant native milkweed for the butterflies to eat and lay eggs on.

Manager of interpretive programs, Andre Copeland emphasizes the ecological and culture importance of monarchs.

- When you take a look worldwide, butterflies have a significance.

In many cultures, they're related to our dreams, going from one realm to another.

Sometimes they can be signals from our loved ones that are in the hereafter coming back to give us certain messages.

Here in Illinois, they have a special significance, because in 1975, a group of school children in Decatur lobbied successfully to have the monarch butterfly considered our state insect.

And in 2017, milkweed was adopted as the Illinois State wildflower.

So these animals can have an intrinsic value, but they can also have a value that's really rooted in our literature and our spirituality.

- [Joanna] Monarch butterflies migrate each fall from the northern border of Canada all the way down to Mexico, and then move back north to states like Illinois in the spring and summer.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service are looking to add the monarch butterfly to its endangered species list.

Advocates hope the designation will turn around the insects' declining population due to habitat loss, insecticides and climate change.

- We've seen before with some of our conservation successes, when you have concerned citizens as well as organizations and government agencies all working together, you can have a dramatic turnaround.

And we have two animals here at Brookfield Zoo Chicago that symbolize conservation success.

See our American bison as well as the bald eagle, these are two animals whose populations were really, really low.

But when everybody worked together in this nation, we saw conservation success.

Those populations rebound to the point where they're stable.

And this is why I am hopeful and confident that we can do it again with the monarch butterfly.

- The US Fish and Wildlife Service is accepting public comments on its proposal to list monarch butterflies as an endangered species now through March 12th.

You can go to fws.

gov to learn more.

On each "EcoWatch" episode, we're profiling endangered or threatened animals in Illinois.

Last episode we talked about the greater prairie chicken.

This time, two creatures that might not be as cute, the Eastern Mississauga snake and the common stripe scorpion.

Here's Dr. Mark Davis with the Illinois Natural History Survey.

Two more animals I wanna talk to you about.

These ones I'm really gonna ask you why we need these around.

The common stripe scorpion, which may shock people, I didn't know they were ever scorpions or are scorpions in Illinois.

And then the Eastern massasauga, which is a snake.

Tell us a little bit about those two.

- So start with the scorpion and I will say, why should we care about them?

I think it holds true for both species.

The medicinal potential and the medical benefits of venomous animals is remarkable.

I assume many of us are have family members or friends who struggle with heart disease.

It's one of the most common diseases we have as Americans.

And you might know people that are on ACE inhibitors.

Well, those are derived from venoms.

And many of the lifesaving therapeutics that we rely on every day are derived from venoms.

And the scorpion and the massasauga are both venomous species.

And so there's tremendous medical benefit to understanding what's happening with their venom, using that for our own benefit.

I'd say beyond that, you know, both species play important roles in rodent control, which, again, benefits human health.

Regulating those rodents on the landscape minimizes the opportunity for all of the different diseases that rodents and their ticks can transmit to us as humans.

And so both of these species have tremendous medicinal value.

With the scorpion, I think it's interesting because it gets back to Illinois' really interesting biodiversity legacy.

A lot of folks don't know that we do have these scorpions in Illinois.

They don't exist in a lot of places, but they're here in a very isolated patch.

Whereas, you know, other parts of their range, they're all over the place and highly abundant.

But as a quirk of circumstance, of geology, of glaciation, they're here and they persist in this place.

And I think it's just cool that they're out there.

Massasaugas, on the other hand, these diminutive, calm, quiet, very cute little rattlesnake species.

You know, again, historically, like the prairie chicken, had been distributed across much of the upper two thirds of Illinois.

And so as, again, mentioning things that contribute to the endangerment process, these rattlesnakes are really interesting.

And they're interesting because they're highly tied to our wet prairies.

And as you mentioned at the top, with 90% of our wetlands gone, those have been largely been removed from the landscape.

And so the available habitat is really restricted.

And at the same time, interestingly enough, to survive their winters, they rely on burrowing crayfish.

And so where they occur in the state, both contemporarily and historically, they spend their winters down in crayfish boroughs to survive the winter.

And so they have these interesting interactions with other really cool segments of Illinois biodiversity.

And again, kind of bringing things back around, the medicinal value, the medical potential from their venom is really important.

And I think we should all commit to making sure that they're around for future generations.

You know, we talked about bats, we talked about snakes, we talked about scorpions, these are all things that historically have been persecuted by Western civilizations, particularly in North America, but they are a part of our biodiversity legacy.

They do play an important role in our ecosystems and in our lives with the ecosystem services they provide.

Bats consuming agricultural pests, rattlesnake venom being used to develop lifesaving drugs.

All of these things enrich our lives and, I think, make the state better for it.

- Thanks for joining us on "EcoWatch."

If you'd like to watch again, share with a friend or watch past episodes, just look for us at wtvp.org.

I'm Mark Welp.

See you again soon.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (no audio) - [Announcer] This program is made possible in part by the Bland Charitable Trust established to educate and create awareness of environmental issues.