(bright music) (bright music continues) - We're talking about one of our most vital natural resources, water.

We have an enormous amount of water in Central Illinois in the form of the Mahomet Aquifer.

The aquifer is the primary source of drinking water for nearly one million people in 14 Illinois counties.

The aquifer runs from the Illinois River east to the Indiana border, and some people are concerned that the aquifer is in danger of being contaminated specifically by carbon capture and storage products, or projects, excuse me.

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.

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

Typically you would call a freshwater aquifer 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 there's like a clay layer above it.

It's about 500 foot down, so maybe 400 foot down, there's a 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 saltwater aquifer.

If you go much deeper, you hit areas that are saltwater, 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 we should also let people know, too, that the Saint Simon Sandstone reservoir that is huge in Illinois is where a lot of these companies wanna store their CO2 emissions, and that is way further down.

I think about a mile down.

Is that right, Andrew?

- Yep, yeah, Mount Simon covers like most of Central and Southern Illinois and it's technically a saline aquifer and it's about a mile down, yep.

- Okay.

And some of the controversy we've heard in the last few years about carbon capture is companies wanna liquefy CO2 so it doesn't get into the air.

They're actually doing this to prevent pollution.

They want to 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 in Decatur is doing this right now.

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

- Thanks, 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 US EPA 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 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.

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 many 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, you know, 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 and 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 indirect, and it's not a long-term vision really.

- I'm just gonna add to that, and Mark, I think it's interesting because that's usually what I would say too.

And I do think that the thing that I would like to leave your viewers with is that this technology does keep fossil fuels going and there's a lot of evidence that you either are going to need to burn a coal-powered gas plant harder or you're going to have to build a new one.

And so there are questions about how we're funding this with taxpayer dollars and whether or not, as Andrew said, those monies would be better spent on technologies that we know work.

- Is this one of those things, you know, the old saying the road to hell is paved with good intentions?

The government's funding these things because they want to, you know, cut down on pollution or get rid of it, yet we're, in some people's eyes, risking a lot more by doing these things next to our major aquifer.

- Exactly.

The Inflation Reduction Act is the bill that funded this and it created an $85 a ton tax credit for injecting carbon underground.

And that's a tax credit these companies are gonna claim and essentially not pay taxes, you know, that they otherwise would've paid.

So really it's coming out of our national budget, and it does feel like it's one of those things that ends up in, negotiations are negotiations and sometimes the things that come out in a bill aren't exactly what you want and everybody wants a piece of their pie.

And so unfortunately sometimes we overinvest in something like this when that credit could have gone towards better programs.

But it is what it is.

Here we are.

- 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 capture project."

"The US EPA 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 response and remediation plan and/or to monitor the well in accordance with its 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 a 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 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 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 below the cap and above the cap into the unauthorized zone.

They use 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 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 watchdogging 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 a 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 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 when 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.

The bill that passed, Safe 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 certainty and certainty only comes in the form of a ban.

- So I would just add to that, Mark.

I think one of the things we haven't talked about is the 2015 designation of the Mahomet as a sole-source aquifer.

And that's important because that designation essentially says there's no reasonably available alternative source of drinking water should the aquifer become contaminated.

And our regulatory bill says if CCS does contaminate water, it needs to be replaced.

So we've got kind of a problem here with one regulation saying, "Hey, you gotta replace it," and the other one saying it's not possible, not reasonably possible to do that.

And with respect to the Mahomet, this is really based on economics.

So the petition that was submitted to the US EPA for designation as a sole-source aquifer, again, back in 2015, learned that when looking at surface water sources to replace the water if that needed to happen, 92% of more than 120 public water supply waters could not provide an economically viable alternative source of drinking water.

And if you look at the groundwater supply, 77% of those same 120 public water suppliers said that they, it was documented that they could not provide an alternative source of water.

It's really expensive and not feasible.

So we're looking not just at the contamination, but also the ability to say, "Hey, your water's contaminated and we really economically can't replace it.

So I think that's an important piece to acknowledge when we're looking at the whole picture.

- So give us an update, I'll send it back to you, Pam, give us an update on potential laws, moratoriums, things that cities, counties, and, you know, county boards are looking at to help protect the Mahomet.

- Yes, well, I think as you're aware, we're working with Senator Faraci and representative Carol Emmons here in Champaign County for a legislative ban, something that we had hoped to get across the line when we were looking at negotiating the Safe CCS Act last year.

And so that bill is going to be reintroduced, it's very much alive, and it will go back through the process again.

In the meantime, we're working with counties and municipalities all across the aquifer footprint to do two things.

One is to adopt a resolution which says we support the legislative ban, sequestration ban, the sole-source aquifer ban, that's going to be moving back through the process again as sponsored by Faraci and Emmons.

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

And DeWitt County has already done this and they've banned 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.

So there's a lot of work that's being done and folks are mobilizing to say, you know, "This is an issue that's important to us.

Our water is being threatened and we wanna make sure that we protect it," at the local level if we have to, but the longer term solution of doing it at the state level I think gives the better protection long term.

- In researching the story, it seems like folks in your area are pretty well aware of what's going on, a lot of news stories coming from Champaign-Urbana, but it seems like the western side of the state where the aquifer is, Tazewell County, places like that, we don't hear a lot of news about this issue.

Andrew, do you think it's just a matter of people needing to get the word out more?

- It could be part of it, yeah.

You know, we are located, both Pam and I are are located in Champaign-Urbana area and we have partners throughout the area, but maybe a little bit less presence in Peoria.

And I hope the folks that watch your program, you know, tune in and check out Protect the Mahomet Aquifer, or www.protectthemahomet.com.

It's our Protect the Mahomet Aquifer campaign.

I will say that Senator Koehler signed on to the legislation and has been a supportive aquifer champion continually.

So, you know, it's a very popular, the legislators who represent the aquifer stand up for it and it's bipartisan.

Senator Rose is a Republican senator who also supported the bill.

So there is a lot of support for the aquifer locally and regionally.

We just need to convince the folks that aren't drinking this water that they need to, you know, raise their voices and support us as well.

- Pam, can you tell us a little bit about the natural gas storage reservoir under the Mahomet that had a leaking problem, specifically talking about the Peoples Gas?

It's not the same thing, but it's kind of the same thing when it comes to worries.

Tell us about what happened there.

- It is a bit of the same thing.

And I would say that the Peoples Gas leak that was discovered in 2015, 2016, by an employee who saw gas bubbling up around the well site, actually, that well was showing signs of corrosion as early as 1995.

So we have a similar situation that happened with ADM. You know, the well was corroding.

They were trying to figure out what was going on, et cetera, et cetera.

But it wasn't until, it wasn't until 2015, 2016, that Peoples Gas determined they had a leak.

And then it was, there had to be a lawsuit that was brought about from the state of Illinois for Peoples Gas and there had to be money appropriated by the state of Illinois, which it has been, at least there's been legislation passed, I don't think the money has been been allocated yet, to actually pay for the replacement water.

And all these years later, 2015 to today, right?

Nine years later, right?

The folks that were affected still do not have a water supply that they're hooked up to.

They've got water that's still being delivered to them at their homes.

So I think this shows and demonstrates the problem.

So the gas that was stored was not below the Mount Simon Eau Claire seal, which we're talking about when CO2 forms, that seal, but it was above that level, I believe, but it still had a corroded well, it still leaked, it still contaminated the water.

It shows how expensive it is to replace water and the fact that we don't yet have a replacement supply of water for those folks who are affected speaks volumes about the concerns we have here with CO2.

- Andrew, to your knowledge, have there been other places in the outside of Illinois or maybe in other parts of Illinois where a CO2 pipeline or a CO2 storage area has seen a leak or a major issue?

- Yeah, so pipelines is a whole different ballgame really.

You know, we're really looking at injection when we talk about carbon sequestration.

But there was a, for pipelines, which are part of this process 'cause many of these proposed sequestration sites are gonna require pipelines to bring that CO2 in.

And so instead of the CO2 being deep underground posing threats to things like aquifers, a pipeline is at the surface.

And the example of a pipeline that ruptured in Satartia, Mississippi, is a really good, scary example.

If you look up Satartia, you know, the emergency vehicles, for example, driving to come support, to help the people who were impacted, run on the combustion and there was no air to combust 'cause there was too much CO2 and so the vehicles failed.

And thankfully no one was killed, but that's just sort of an example of sort of how the threats can be opposed at the surface and an example of something that has gone wrong, I don't know, sequestration is, you know, ADM is really sort of seen as the shining example of leading this in Illinois.

And so that's why I think Pam and I are really looking at, on the sequestration side, that incident as a warning sign of what's going to happen if we scale up and risk our aquifer for what is a lot of private gain through this lucrative tax credit.

- Yeah, I'm glad you clarified that the CO2 pipelines, which a lot of companies wanted to bring through Central Illinois, but Wolf Carbon Solutions, for example, decided against that after a lot of public backlash, that's how they transfer the CO2 to a place where they can inject it into the ground.

So you have issues kind of all around getting the CO2 to the injection point.

I just wanna ask you both before we wrap it up, 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.

So you watch.

You're gonna hear more about it out west.

You know, that's gonna happen soon.

But people can go there to find out more about what's happening and I would encourage everybody to do that.

- And you can also go to our individual website.

So Eco-Justice Collaborative is Pam's organization.

I'm with Prairie Rivers Network.

We're working closely with Illinois People's Action, another group.

The Sierra Club has a lot of local chapters that are helping with this.

It's been a sort of a collaborative effort raising the red alert here.

- All right, well, I appreciate both of you.

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

Thanks for your time.

- Thank you.

- Thank you, Mark.

- And thank you all for watching.

We appreciate it.

You can check out this episode and all prior episodes of "At Issue."

Just go to wtvp.org.

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Have a good night.

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