First commercial CCS plant is in Illinois. It leaks. | Grist

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A row of executives from grain-processing behemoth Archer Daniels Midland watched as Verlyn Rosenberger, 88, took the podium at a Decatur city council meeting last week. It was the first meeting since she and the rest of her central Illinois community learned of a second leak at ADM’s carbon dioxide sequestration well beneath Lake Decatur, their primary source of drinking water.

“Just because CO2 sequestration can be done doesn’t mean it should be done,” the retired elementary school teacher told the city council. “Pipes eventually leak.”

ADM’s facility in central Illinois was the first permitted commercial carbon sequestration operation in the country, and is on the forefront of a booming, multibillion-dollar carbon capture and storage, or CCS, industry that promises to permanently sequester planet-warming carbon dioxide deep underground.

The emerging technology has become a cornerstone of government strategies to slash fossil fuel emissions and meet climate goals. Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, has supercharged industry subsidies and tax credits and set off a CCS gold rush.

There are now only four carbon sequestration wells operating in the United States — two each in Illinois and Indiana — but many more are on the way. Three proposed pipelines and 22 wells are up for review by state and federal regulators in Illinois, where the geography makes the landscape especially well suited for CCS. Nationwide, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing 150 different applications.

But if CCS operations leak, they can pose significant risks to water resources. That’s because pressurized CO2 stored underground can escape or propel brine trapped in the saline reservoirs typically used for permanent storage. The leaks can lead to heavy metal contamination and potentially lower pH levels, all of which can make drinking water undrinkable. This is what bothers critics of carbon capture, who worry that it’s solving one problem by creating another.

A woman holds a folder of papers seated next to an elderly man — Verlyn Rosenberger, 88, sits by her husband, Paul Rosenberger, at a city council meeting in Decatur, Illinois, earlier this month. They are both concerned about leaks from the commercial carbon sequestration plant that sits in their town. Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco / Grist

In September, the public learned of a leak at ADM’s Decatur site after it was reported by E&E News, which covers energy and environmental issues. Additional testing mandated by the EPA turned up a second leak later that month. The EPA has confirmed these leaks posed no threat to water sources. Still, they raise concern about whether more leaks are likely, whether the public has any right to know when leaks occur, and if CCS technology is really a viable climate solution.

Officials with Chicago-based ADM spoke at the Decatur City Council meeting immediately after Rosenberger. They tried to assuage her concerns. “We simply wouldn’t do this if we didn’t believe that it was safe,” said Greg Webb, ADM’s vice president of state-government relations.

But ADM kept local and state officials in the dark for months about the first leak. They detected it back in March, five months after discovering corrosion in the tubing in the sequestration well. However, neither leak was disclosed as the company this spring petitioned the city of Decatur for an easement to expand its operations. The company also remained tight-lipped about the leak as it took part in major negotiations over the state’s first CCS regulations, the SAFE CCS Act, between April and May, according to several parties involved.

As a result, when Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed those CCS regulations into law at ADM’s Decatur facility in July, he was unaware of the leak that had occurred more than 5,000 feet below his seat, his office confirmed.

“I thought we were negotiating in good faith with ADM,” bill sponsor and state Senator Laura Fine, a Democrat, said in a statement. “When negotiating complex legislation, we expect all parties to be forthcoming and transparent in order to ensure we enact effective legislation.”

It’s unclear whether ADM was required by law to report the leaks any sooner than it did. According to the company’s permits, it only has to notify state and local officials if there are “major” or “serious” emergencies. The EPA wouldn’t comment on whether ADM was required to disclose, and neither the EPA nor ADM would confirm if the two leaks in Decatur qualified as “minor” emergencies.

In a statement, an ADM spokesperson said “the developments occurred at a depth of approximately 5,000 feet. They posed no threat to the surface or groundwater, nor to public health. It is for those reasons that additional notifications were not made.”

That’s little comfort to Jenny Cassel, a senior attorney with Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm.

“It’s a little terrifying,” Cassel said. “Because if the operator, in fact, made the wrong decision, and there is in fact a major problem, then not only will local officials not know about it, EPA is not going to know about it, which is indeed what appears to have happened here.”

The Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition, which applauded the signing of the regulatory bill earlier this summer, called ADM’s decision to keep the March 2024 leak from the public “unacceptable and dangerous.”

David Horn, a city councilman and professor of biology at Decatur’s Millikin University, said the city was blindsided. “This information was substantive, relevant information that could have influenced the terms of the easement that was ultimately signed in May of 2024,” he said, adding that the delay in disclosure calls into question the long-term safety of CCS, and the ability of the EPA to protect water in the face of future CCS mishaps.